Manchester AI software specialist snapped up by NASDAQ-listed group
A Manchester-based software company that says it can deliver faster and more energy-efficient AI systems has been acquired by US-based NetApp, subject to approval, for an undisclosed sum.
Pembroke VCT, the London-listed venture capital trust, said its portfolio company, PEAK AIO, has entered into the agreement. The proposed transaction would support the next phase of PEAK AIO’s growth by combining its AI infrastructure technology with the NetApp Platform, global scale and customer reach.
PEAK AIO was founded in Manchester by Mark Klarzynski and was designed to address some of the industry’s most demanding data-intensive computing challenges.
The company’s core innovation, a next-generation metadata architecture and high performance parallel file system, was developed to solve one of the defining infrastructure challenges of the AI era – enabling shared storage to scale alongside the GPU clusters that power modern AI workloads.
Pembroke says the acquisition by a NASDAQ-listed strategic buyer not only has the potential for significant return for shareholders, if completed, but further represents the strongest possible validation of the investment thesis, that backing a British founder with deep technical expertise, at an early stage, in a market that was still forming, would generate a compelling return for VCT shareholders.
Mark 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.
“Legacy storage was never going to work at the scale and cost point that real AI projects demand.”
He added: “We’re excited to join NetApp as our platform, their global reach and the trust its customers place in ONTAP give our architecture a home where it can scale to the largest AI environments in the world.
“I could not be more proud of what the team has built, or more excited about what we build next and want to thank Pembroke for its stewardship.”
Fred Ursell, head of investments at Pembroke Investment Managers and a director of PEAK AIO, said: “Pembroke’s purpose is to back British founders early and support them through every stage of growth.
“PEAK AIO is one of the finest examples of what that looks like in practice. It’s a company built in Manchester, that has grown into a technology the global AI infrastructure market cannot ignore.”
He added: “This transaction is validation of that journey, and a reminder of what British tech is capable of when it is given the right backing and the space to grow.”
