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NetApp has announced its intent to acquire PEAK:AIO, a Manchester-based software-defined AI storage company specialising in metadata architecture and parallel file systems.
The planned acquisition is designed to accelerate NetApp’s AI infrastructure roadmap by bringing in metadata services and parallel namespace capabilities intended to help AI cloud environments scale shared storage alongside growing GPU clusters.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
Addressing AI’s storage problem
The deal reflects a challenge facing enterprises as AI workloads become more embedded across operations: traditional storage architectures were not built for the scale, concurrency and performance demands of AI factories, AI clouds and data-intensive applications.
NetApp is building an architecture that separates metadata from data, allowing metadata services to scale independently. The company views this as a foundation for AI infrastructure capable of supporting trillions of files, exabyte-scale environments and parallel workloads.
By combining PEAK:AIO’s metadata capabilities with NetApp’s ONTAP software, the company expects to deliver an architecture that retains ONTAP’s resilience, security and operational maturity while introducing new scalability for AI workloads.
The Chief Executive Officer at NetApp, George Kurian, framed the acquisition as central to the company’s AI infrastructure strategy.
“AI clouds need high-performance shared storage that can scale alongside growing GPU clusters while maintaining the resilience, security and operational simplicity organisations depend on,” Kurian stated.
“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 to help customers maximise infrastructure efficiency and support AI at hyperscale cloud.”
PEAK:AIO’s research roots
PEAK:AIO’s technology emerged from collaborations with research institutions including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University and was developed to address demanding data-intensive computing challenges.
The company’s platform delivers AI storage from a single server through to exabyte-scale deployments on industry-standard hardware. Its current deployments span Los Alamos National Laboratory, NHS AIDE, Oxford Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Strathclyde MediForge Hub and the Zoological Society of London.
The planned integration will add metadata services and parallel namespace innovation to NetApp’s ONTAP-based data architecture while creating an evolution path for existing ONTAP customers.
The Chief Technology Officer and Founder at PEAK:AIO, Mark Klarzynski, pointed to a shared outlook on the future of data infrastructure as a driver behind the deal.
“NetApp and PEAK:AIO connected through the shared belief that the AI era demands a fundamentally new approach to data infrastructure,” Klarzynski explained.
“What excites us most about joining NetApp is the opportunity to pair our culture of innovation with the reach, scale and customer trust of a global leader. Together with NetApp, we have an opportunity to help shape that future and deliver technologies that make managing data at a massive scale both practical and accessible.”
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What the combined technology aims to deliver
PEAK:AIO’s metadata innovation is designed to extend metadata scale, deliver a global namespace and enable parallel NFS-based access for parallel workloads. NetApp contributes ONTAP expertise, global reach and operational maturity.
Together, the two companies expect to deliver capabilities that simplify the deployment and operation of shared storage for large AI environments.
The architecture is intended to support trillions of files and multi-exabyte deployments while preserving the resiliency, security and operational simplicity that ONTAP customers expect. It combines scalable metadata services, standards-based parallel NFS access and ONTAP as the data foundation, with the aim of reducing data-related GPU stalls, improving infrastructure efficiency and accelerating AI workloads.
NetApp’s broader AI infrastructure play
The acquisition fits within a broader push by NetApp to position itself in the AI infrastructure market.
The company has been building out what it calls its data platform, a unified foundation that connects, protects and activates data across cloud environments, workloads and on-premises infrastructure. Built on ONTAP and enhanced by automation through the AI Data Engine and AFX, the platform is designed to deliver observability, resilience and intelligence at scale.
NetApp describes its architecture as disaggregated by design, separating storage, services and control so that enterprises can modernise, scale and innovate without vendor lock-in.
For NetApp, the PEAK:AIO acquisition represents an investment in the plumbing that underpins large-scale AI deployments. As enterprises move to build and operate their own AI infrastructure, the ability to manage metadata and file systems at scale is becoming a critical consideration.
The deal also signals continued interest from established storage vendors in acquiring smaller, specialised companies that have developed technology in research and high-performance computing settings and bringing those capabilities into enterprise environments.
Last Updated on September 26, 2026 by Nick Ross
