Nvidia Corp. has reportedly acquired Gretel Labs Inc., a synthetic data platform startup that helps developers and organizations generate artificial datasets that mirror the characteristics of real data for use in artificial intelligence models.

Wired, referencing “two people with direct knowledge of the deal,” said the price paid for Gretel by Nvidia came in at nine figures and was higher than the $320 million at which Gretel was most recently valued.

Founded in 2019, Gretel offers a synthetic data platform that allows organizations to generate realistic, privacy-preserving datasets for AI and machine learning applications. The platform leverages advanced generative models to create artificial data that retains the statistical properties of real-world datasets while ensuring data privacy.

Gretel’s platform supports various data types, including structured tabular data, time-series data and unstructured text, which allow companies to safely share, analyze and develop AI models without exposing sensitive or proprietary information.

The company also offers an application programming interface that allows for integration into existing workflows, allowing developers to generate and customize synthetic datasets on demand. Users can also fine-tune the balance between data fidelity and anonymization, all while being guided by built-in privacy controls.

Beyond data generation, Gretel supports transformation and augmentation workflows that allow users to enhance, filter and reshape datasets to fit specific use cases.

Coming into its reported acquisition, Gretel had raised $65.5 million over three rounds, including a round of $50 million in 2021. Investors in the company include Anthos Capital LP, Greylock, Moonshots Capital, S32 Pty. Ltd. and Village Global LP.

Nvidia’s decision to acquire Gretel, presuming the acquisition report is correct, aligns with its strategy to enhance AI development by addressing data scarcity and privacy challenges.

With Gretel, Nvidia will offer developers tools for generating realistic, privacy-preserving datasets as well as training and fine-tuning AI models across various applications. The acquisition will also complement Nvidia’s existing synthetic data initiatives, which are designed to generate synthetic data for training large language models.

Image: Gretel