Nebul

Nebul took its name from the word nebula, which fits perfectly because the company helps illuminate the path for customers as they navigate the complexities of building real-world AI applications.

Nebul has created a new model for sovereign clouds, where companies enjoy a private experience for their data – secure, compliant, and customizable.

“We call ourselves private to the core,” said CEO Arnold Juffer. “We help companies accelerate their AI efforts without the risk.” 

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Leiden, Nebul has partnered with NetApp to provide the right cloud and AI infrastructure for global companies. From private GPTs to AI superclusters, Nebul focuses on delivering tangible results for companies that need flexible, best-of-breed solutions.

Nebul was among the first European companies to adapt high-performance computing (HPC) and AI/ML technologies to aaS model for healthcare. By meeting the industry’s rigorous security, privacy, and regulatory demands, Nebul could apply this same model to other sensitive workloads.

In the race to benefit from AI projects, Nebul found that companies were not properly managing their data.

“Everybody says, ‘data is the new gold,’ but I say, data is worthless by itself,” Juffer said. “You need something that turns data into real information. You need machine learning in some form to turn that data into truly actionable information.”

Not only that, but data also needs a compliance framework, especially in Europe, to avoid unnecessary risk and adhere to applicable governance regulations.

“In Europe, as soon as you start using healthcare or education data, privacy laws kick in,” Juffer said. “And then you need to make sure that you have the proper compliance in place.” 

But even if you have the right guidelines, AI projects still require quality data and the right pipelines to manage it.

“We all have the experience with ChatGPT or any other public AI platform where it gives you with 100% certainty the wrong answer, right?” Juffer said. “The real problems start when we get into something legal, like HR or healthcare. We don’t want hallucinations. We want real answers.” 

To satisfy the compliance rules while operationalizing AI projects, Nebul knew it had to carefully control the entire infrastructure landscape. 

“So that was the idea of building a new cloud that focuses on high performance computing with a strong focus on machine learning and making sure that we have all the compliance in place,” Juffer said. 

With NetApp as a partner, Nebul uses NVIDIA technologies to offer GPU-accelerated computing, private AI capabilities, and digital twin services, which help with testing and data integrity. Their services are aimed at organizations that can efficiently run cloud-native applications, AI/ML workloads and data visualization while adhering to the strictest compliance and privacy guidelines.

Nebul’s key differentiators are its sovereign AI cloud, security, compliance, and end-to-end multi-tenancy. It also offers robust GenAI services like private GPT, agentic AI, private inference APIs, and RAG – all supported by NetApp.

NetApp’s best-in-class, end-to-end multi-tenancy capabilities provides Nebul with the ability to offer a truly sovereign shared AI cloud platform. The NetApp DataOps Toolkit, multi-protocol functionality, and especially the S3/NFS duality provides extreme value to Nebul’s business processes as well as the flexibility and data pipeline integration Nebul can offer its end customers. 

“That’s why we were attracted to NetApp,” Juffer said. “For a very long time, NetApp has mastered the segregation and security of customer data, which prevents data from getting mixed into one big share or S3 bucket, where one wrong setting can mean that other people have access to your data. 

“That design approach to security by NetApp really resonates well into our technology and philosophy.” 

In the fast-moving AI space, Nebul has already identified key market trends and is focused on differentiating its services beyond simply providing infrastructure. 

“If you’re just a GPU shop, it’s hard to stand out,” said Juffer. “Customers need more than compute; they need support navigating the entire AI lifecycle. That’s why we’ve developed AI Jumpstart, a program designed to accelerate their AI journey. This includes customized workshops, proof-of-concept development, and tailored training, all focused on the specific needs of each company. Beyond that, we offer the services that companies need to operationalize a full enterprise-ready AI stack and ensure a fast return on investment for our customers.”