Shares in chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) rose over 1% on Monday morning after the U.S. chipmaker announced its acquisition of SchedMD, a provider of software used in managing AI workloads and high-performance computing.
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The move marks Nvidia’s latest push to further open-source technology amid the ongoing AI race. On Monday, Nvidia also debuted its Nemotron 3 family of open-source AI models, adding to the recent rollout of “the world’s first industry-scale” open-source software for the development of self-driving vehicles.
Nvidia did not disclose how much it paid for SchedMD, which is based in Utah and operates as a software development company.
Why Is SchedMD Important?
SchedMD is the brain behind Slurm, the open-source software used to manage AI workloads and high-performance computing. Slurm is used by developers to build foundational generative AI models, including for training and inference — the task of using a trained AI model to respond to queries or make predictions based on new data.
SchedMD attracts various types of customers, including cloud capacity providers, manufacturers, AI companies, and research labs. These customers come from various sectors, including healthcare and life sciences, autonomous driving, energy, manufacturing, government, and financial services.
Nvidia to Keep SchedMD’s Software Open-Source
Nvidia has assured that it will keep Slurm open-source and vendor-neutral, that is, it will make it compatible with various types of hardware and software systems. The chipmaker added that it will also ensure that the software remains widely available to its existing community of users.
“Nvidia will accelerate SchedMD’s access to new systems — allowing users of NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform to optimize workloads across their entire compute infrastructure — while also supporting a diverse hardware and software ecosystem, so customers can run heterogeneous clusters with the latest Slurm innovations,” the chipmaker explained in a blog post.
Similarly, Danny Auble, CEO of SchedMD, noted that Slurm will benefit from Nvidia’s advanced know-how and investment in accelerated computing capabilities.
Is NVDA a Good Stock to Buy Now?
On Wall Street, Nvidia’s shares continue to enjoy a Strong Buy consensus rating from analysts based on 39 Buys, one Hold, and one Sell issued over the past three months.
In addition, the average NVDA price target of $258.45 implies about 46% upside from the current trading levels.
See more NVDA analyst ratings here.