REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoJune 26 (Reuters) - Databricks said on Monday it had agreed to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) startup MosaicML in a mostly stock deal valued at $1.3 billion, marking Databricks' latest efforts to build an ecosystem for enterprises to use open-source AI models. San Francisco-based MosaicML provides software tools designed to make it cheaper to carry out AI work, which often involves training AI algorithms on huge troves of data using expensive computer chips. Databricks said the deal would combine its AI technology with MosaicML's language-model platform, allowing businesses a "simple, fast way to retain control, security, and ownership over their valuable data without high costs". Databricks, which sells software tools for building AI systems, has been an advocate for open-source models, which it argues could rival the models players like OpenAI and Google are offering. Both Databricks and MosaicML have released open-source foundation models, which is the category of core technology behind services like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

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Persons: Dado Ruvic, Databricks, MosaicML, Tiyashi Datta, Krystal Hu, Pooja Desai, Mark Potter Organizations: REUTERS, Google, Microsoft Corp, Lux Capital, Thomson Locations: San Francisco, Bengaluru, Toronto