Sources: SGlang project emerges as RadixArk with $400M valuation as blockchain market explodes

Some of the teams responsible for managing SGlang, a popular open source tool used by companies such as xAI and Cursor to improve AI model training, have switched to launching new products. The company, called Images of RadixArkwas announced last August.

RadixArk, which was founded as SGLang in 2023 inside the UC Berkeley lab of Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, was recently valued at about $400 million in a round led by Accel, according to two people familiar with the matter. TechCrunch could not confirm the size of the investment.

The startup raised angel funding from investors, including Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the people said.

Ying Sheng, a major contributor to SGlang and a former engineer at xAI, has left Elon Musk’s AI to become the founder and CEO of RadixArk, according to a LinkedIn profile he made it last month. Sheng was previously a research scientist at Databricks.

RadixArk’s Ying Sheng, Accel, and Lip-Bu Tan did not respond to requests for comment.

Both SGlang and RadixArk focus on optimizing control – specifically allowing models to run faster and more efficiently on the same hardware. Along with model training, simulation represents a large part of the server costs associated with AI applications. As a result, equipment that fulfills this function can save a lot of money immediately.

vLLM, the most mature concept implementation project, has also been transformed from an open source project to a startup. The newly formed company has been in talks to raise $160 million at a valuation of $1 billion, Forbes reported last month.

Three people familiar with the deal tell TechCrunch that Andreessen Horowitz is leading the investment in vLLM, although final figures for the investment are not yet available. Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment. vLLM co-founder Simon Mo called details of the round ‘inaccurate’ in a statement to TechCrunch, although he declined to specify what was wrong.

Like SGlang, vLLM was installed in Ion Stoica’s lab at UC Berkeley. Stoica, a professor at UC Berkeley, is a well-known co-founder of Databricks and several other startups.

Several large technology companies already run their simulation projects using vLLM, and SGlang has become more popular in the past six months, Brittany Walker, a partner at CRV, told TechCrunch. His company did not reimburse any company.

RadixArk continues to develop SGlang as an open source AI modeling engine. The startup is also building Miles, a unique framework designed to leverage learning, which allows businesses to train AI models to become smarter over time.

While most of its tools are free, RadixArk has begun charging a fee for hosting services, a person familiar with the company told TechCrunch.

Startups that provide artificial intelligence solutions have seen a surge in funding in recent months, confirming the continued demand for AI. Baseten recently acquired $300 million on The cost of $ 5 billionThe Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. This follows a similar move by competitor Fireworks AI, which it upgraded $250 million at a cost of $ 4 billion last October.