Ola has shifted its entire workload to its own in-house artificial intelligence platform, Krutim, from Microsoft Azure, a cloud service provider. This is a week after the company ended ties with Microsoft Azure.
Taking to X, Ola, founder and CEO, wrote, “Done. As committed, Azure spend is now 0. All workloads are on the @Krutrim cloud. Within a week.” Aggarwal also said that they will help others leave Azure and move to Krutim. “More than 2500 devs have signed up!! We will be working with everyone to get onto our cloud services over the coming weeks,” he wrote.
In an earlier post, Aggarwal also promised to give a full year of free cloud service to any other developer who wants to leave Azure in an effort to attract new customers. But there is a catch to this offer: "As long as you don't go back to Azure after that!"
It all started with a post on pronoun illness by Aggarwal that was removed by LinkedIn for violating community guidelines. Aggarwal accused LinkedIn on May 9 of removing his post regarding pronoun disease, claiming that their AI technology was forcing a particular political stance on Indian users. That's when he gave the hint that India has to develop its own AI and technology.
Read: The Cloud Wars: How Pronoun Politics Made Ola Ditch Microsoft Azure for Krutrim
On May 11, he posted that since LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and Ola is a big customer of Microsoft's Azure, they have decided to move out their entire workload within the next week.
Unveiled in 2023, Krutim became the first AI unicorn in January 2024. At a valuation of $1 billion, the company raised $50 million in a funding round that was led by Matrix Partners. Krutim, which goes by the tagline 'India's own AI', aims to build an entire AI computing stake. The AI platform says that they offer high-performance GPUs, real-time analytics and monitoring, scalable resources, advanced security measures, and a user-friendly interface.
