Sources: project SGLang spins out as RadixArk with $400M valuation as inference market explodes | TechCrunch

"Some of the team responsible for maintaining SGLang, a popular open-source tool used by companies like xAI and Cursor to accelerate AI model training, has transitioned to its recently launched commercial startup. That company, called RadixArk, was announced last August. RadixArk, which originated as SGLang in 2023 inside the UC Berkeley lab of Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, was recently valued at about $400 million in a round led by Accel, according to two people familiar with the matter. TechCrunch could not confirm the size of the funding."

"Both SGLang and RadixArk focus on optimizing inference processing - essentially allowing models to run faster and more efficiently on the same hardware. Together with model training, inference represents a large portion of the server costs associated with AI services. As a result, tools that optimize the process can create enormous savings almost immediately. vLLM, a more mature project for optimizing inference, has also been transitioned from an open-source project to a startup."

Some of the team responsible for maintaining SGLang transitioned to RadixArk, a commercial startup announced in August. RadixArk originated as SGLang in 2023 inside the UC Berkeley lab of Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica. The company was recently valued at about $400 million in a round led by Accel, according to two people familiar with the matter, though the funding size could not be confirmed. RadixArk previously raised angel capital from investors including Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Ying Sheng, a key SGLang contributor and former xAI engineer, became RadixArk co-founder and CEO. Both SGLang and RadixArk focus on optimizing inference processing to lower AI service server costs. vLLM also moved toward commercialization and has pursued large funding talks, though some reporting about that raise was disputed.

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