Nvidia has acquired artificial data firm Gretel, with the price exceeding the company’s most recent valuation of $320m though the exact amount is unknown.
The deal will see Gretel folded into Nvidia, with its technology deployed as part of the chipmaker’s cloud-based, generative artificial intelligence services.
Gretel’s platform offers developers generative AI modules without the concerns around data scarcity or privacy issues around using real people’s data.
The acquisition supports Nvidia’s roll out of synthetic data generation tools for developers to train AI models for use in specific applications.
Synthetic data is designed to mimic real-world events to offer a scalable, less labour-intensive option to build AI modules while offering privacy and diversity in datasets.
Critics, however, argue that synthetic data could create a “model collapse” scenario where a model degrades significantly in quality when fine-tuned with data generated by other models.
