Graphiant Joins Mplify to Forge the Future of AI-Ready Networks

SAN JOSE, Calif. – May 07, 2026 – By Deborah Cooper

In a strategic move aimed at building the foundational infrastructure for the next wave of artificial intelligence, networking company Graphiant announced today it has joined Mplify, a global industry alliance dedicated to accelerating the AI-powered digital economy. The partnership signals a concerted effort to advance Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) capabilities and establish open, interoperable standards for a world increasingly reliant on distributed data and AI workloads.

Graphiant, a software-based networking firm founded in 2020, will collaborate within the Mplify ecosystem of network, cloud, and cybersecurity leaders to drive the development and certification of secure, AI-ready network services. As part of the move, Graphiant's Founder and President, Khalid Raza, a renowned figure in the networking industry, has been appointed to the Mplify Technology Advisory Board, placing the company in a key position to influence future standards.

"Mplify brings together the organizations building and delivering the next generation of AI-driven network services," said Kevin Vachon, COO of Mplify, in a statement. "NaaS is becoming the model for how these services are delivered, and through aligned standards, APIs, and certification, our members are turning industry vision into real, scalable service delivery. We're excited to welcome Graphiant as they engage with the ecosystem and help accelerate that progress."

Building the Network for Tomorrow's Intelligence

The collaboration arrives at a critical juncture for enterprise technology. The rapid adoption of AI has created unprecedented demands on network infrastructure that traditional architectures are ill-equipped to handle. AI workloads, particularly for training large language models, are voracious consumers of data, requiring the movement of petabyte-scale datasets across distributed environments that span on-premises data centers, multiple public clouds, and the network edge.

These workloads are characterized by massive, bursty flows of "east-west" traffic between servers and GPU clusters, a stark contrast to the predictable "north-south" traffic patterns that older networks were designed for. The result is often network congestion, high latency, and wasted GPU cycles, creating a significant bottleneck for AI innovation. An "AI-ready" network must provide not only massive bandwidth and ultra-low latency but also the elasticity to scale resources on demand and the intelligence to manage complex traffic patterns automatically.

Graphiant's platform was engineered from the ground up to address these specific challenges. The company's core innovation is a stateless architecture that performs pure packet forwarding without maintaining complex customer state. This design eliminates the "tunnel sprawl" and configuration complexity inherent in first-generation SD-WAN solutions, enabling what the company describes as near-infinite scalability and secure any-to-any connectivity. For AI applications, this translates into the ability to create high-bandwidth, protected "lanes" for critical data flows, ensuring that model training and real-time inference are not hampered by network performance issues. By joining Mplify, Graphiant aims to align its advanced architecture with emerging industry-wide standards, ensuring its solution can interoperate within a broader, multi-vendor ecosystem.

A New Era of Openness? Challenging Decades of Vendor Lock-In

Beyond the technical imperatives of AI, the partnership strikes at a long-standing issue in the networking industry: vendor lock-in. For decades, enterprises have been constrained by proprietary hardware and software ecosystems that limit flexibility, stifle innovation, and drive up costs. Mplify's stated mission is to dismantle these silos by developing common standards, APIs, and certification frameworks that enable seamless, automated service delivery across different providers.

The alliance is already a defining authority behind standards like Carrier Ethernet and Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) APIs. By bringing Graphiant into the fold, it gains a partner whose entire ethos is built on a clean-slate approach to networking that prioritizes interoperability.

"At Graphiant, we are building AI-ready networks grounded in standardized protocols and true interoperability," stated Ali Shaikh, CEO of Graphiant. "Our alignment with Mplify accelerates the shift to open, interoperable NaaS eliminating vendor lock-in and enabling the industry to move faster, together."

This sentiment is echoed in Graphiant's technology, which contrasts sharply with legacy systems. Instead of retrofitting new features onto older architectures, Graphiant's platform was designed for a cloud-native, API-driven world. This allows network and security policies to be programmed and automated, giving enterprises granular control over data sovereignty and security without being tied to a single vendor's hardware or management console. The collaboration with Mplify is a clear signal that both organizations see a future where enterprise networks are assembled from best-of-breed services in an open marketplace, rather than purchased from a single, monolithic provider.

From Startup to Standard-Bearer: Graphiant's Strategic Play

For Graphiant, joining Mplify is more than a technical collaboration; it is a significant step in its strategic evolution from a well-funded startup to an influential standard-bearer. Founded by Khalid Raza, widely known as the "Father of SD-WAN" for his pioneering work as co-founder and CTO of Viptela (acquired by Cisco for $610 million), Graphiant carries a formidable legacy of network innovation. Raza's 17-year tenure at Cisco as a Distinguished Engineer further burnishes the company's credentials.

Raza's appointment to the Mplify Technology Advisory Board is particularly noteworthy. It provides Graphiant with a direct voice in shaping the next generation of NaaS and AI networking standards, validating its technology and vision at the industry level. This move elevates the company's profile, placing it alongside established leaders in the ongoing conversation about the future of enterprise connectivity.

Backed by prominent investors including Sequoia Capital, Two Bear Capital, and Saudi Aramco, Graphiant has already garnered praise from industry analysts for delivering what one called "MPLS class performance with as-a-Service agility." Customers have lauded its ability to provide reliable, secure connectivity at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional solutions. By embedding itself within Mplify's influential ecosystem, Graphiant not only gains broader market visibility but also reinforces its commitment to building the open, programmable, and performant networks required to power the AI-driven economy of tomorrow.