NetApp agrees to buy Manchester's PEAK:AIO in AI storage deal
NetApp has signed a deal to acquire Manchester-based PEAK:AIO, combining its metadata and parallel-NFS technology with ONTAP for AI workloads.
NetApp said on Friday 25 September that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PEAK:AIO, the Manchester-based software-defined storage company founded by Mark Klarzynski. Intelligent CIO Market Business News
The planned deal would combine PEAK:AIO’s scale-out metadata services and parallel namespace technology with NetApp’s ONTAP platform. The combined architecture is aimed at AI workloads, enabling shared storage to scale alongside growing GPU clusters while preserving the resilience, security and operational controls of ONTAP. Lapaas Voice
NetApp says the technology targets the metadata bottleneck that can leave expensive GPU clusters idle while waiting for data, and the companies describe a future architecture capable of supporting trillions of files and multi-exabyte deployments. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals; it has not closed.
There is a UK investment angle: PEAK:AIO is a portfolio company of Pembroke, the London-listed venture capital trust, which said the proposed transaction would support the next phase of the company’s growth and, if completed, would be expected to deliver a significant return for Pembroke VCT shareholders. Pembroke invested in PEAK:AIO in 2025.
Klarzynski said: “We built PEAK AIO on a simple but radical premise: that the AI era deserved storage infrastructure built for it, not inherited from a previous generation of computing.” NetApp chief executive George Kurian said: “With PEAK:AIO, we are delivering on our vision for a new generation of AI infrastructure that combines scalable metadata services with the proven foundation of ONTAP.”
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