Chatsworth, CA, January 9, 2025 – AI and data intelligence solutions company DDN today announced an investment of $300 million from Blackstone, an alternative asset manager, valuing the company at $5 billion.
“This investment cements DDN’s position as the only choice for organizations seeking to implement scalable, reliable, and secure AI applications that deliver tangible business outcomes with up to 10x returns,” the company said. “With this groundbreaking deal, DDN is poised for historic growth in 2025 following a record-breaking 400% growth in AI revenue in 2024.”
Building on its two-decade heritage of powering the world’s most demanding AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads—including over 500,000 NVIDIA GPUs for organizations ranging from top financial services, life sciences, and Sovereign AI customers to AI hyperscalers and cloud providers such as xAI, NVIDIA and Lambda—DDN is primed to redefine the enterprise AI infrastructure landscape.
By combining DDN’s world-class data intelligence with NVIDIA’s AI Enterprise Platform and advanced GPU technology, businesses achieve faster time to market, reduced operational costs, and superior AI-driven insights.
- Optimizing LLMs and RAG: DDN’s platform enables instant data ingestion, real-time processing, and up to 100x faster insight generation—accelerating enterprise deployments of LLMs, Gen AI, and RAG for customer-facing applications, predictive analytics, and operational improvements.
- Purpose-Built AI Infrastructure: DDN’s next-gen platform delivers unmatched speed, efficiency, and reliability, shrinking model training time from weeks to hours while offering up to 15x faster checkpointing. Enterprises can now deploy mission-critical AI workloads with the same world-class capabilities trusted by the most advanced AI hyperscalers.
- Game-Changing Performance: By maximizing GPU utilization and delivering massive data throughput—including scalable IO for unstructured data—DDN’s platform eliminates bottlenecks and powers continuous inferencing for real-time decision-making.
- 10x Business Value: Through energy, space, and cooling reductions of up to 10x, DDN’s advanced architectures deliver an exceptional ROI that turbocharges AI-driven innovation without sacrificing operational efficiency or sustainability.
- Seamless Deployment Across Environments: DDN’s flexible, software-defined approach integrates effortlessly across on-premises, cloud, and edge ecosystems, ensuring organizations can adapt as AI needs evolve—without compromising performance or security.
- Comprehensive Data Management & Security: Built-in secure multitenancy, granular access controls, and dynamic performance allocation empower enterprises to streamline complex AI workflows while keeping sensitive data protected for enterprises and Sovereign AI deployments.
“DDN’s track record for delivering cutting-edge AI and HPC platforms to thousands of customers globally is just scratching the surface of the transformative impact they’ll have on the enterprise AI market. We see DDN as the clear leader in scaling enterprise-grade solutions that drive meaningful business returns for modern AI deployments.” – Jas, Blackstone
“Blackstone’s support accelerates our mission to redefine the enterprise AI infrastructure category and scale at an even faster rate,” said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-Founder of DDN.“By fueling our mission to push the boundaries of data intelligence, we can empower organizations worldwide with next-level AI solutions that drive groundbreaking innovation and deliver 10x returns on their investments.”
DDN has been highly profitable and privately owned for over two decades, achieving significant global success without external funding. The unprecedented growth of AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity, prompting DDN to accept outside investment for the first time. This infusion of capital positions DDN to:
- Bring the powers of supercomputing and HPC technology to the enterprise AI world.
- Challenge industry giants in AI and data management with unrivaled performance and scale.
- Meet surging demand for enterprise AI solutions worldwide.
“This investment enables us to execute our strategy to bring HPC-grade AI solutions to enterprises, transforming industries and delivering measurable outcomes,” said Paul Bloch, President and Co-Founder of DDN. “Our teams are laser-focused on solving real business challenges, from accelerating LLM deployments to enhancing inferencing, so our customers can unlock their data’s potential and achieve tangible ROI faster than ever before.”
DDN’s fully scalable AI training platforms enable organizations across healthcare, autonomous vehicles, financial services, and more to process and analyze massive datasets efficiently, cutting costs and time to insight. With a proven track record of delivering tangible business outcomes, DDN stands at the forefront of enterprise AI and HPC—bringing simplicity, security, and speed to every stage of the AI lifecycle.
