Definition

Ray is an open-source distributed computing framework for scaling Python and AI workloads (data processing, training, inference, reinforcement learning) across clusters of CPUs/GPUs. Created by the founders of anyscale; donated to the PyTorch Foundation in 2025.

Key Points

  • De facto open standard for many large-scale ML platform teams
  • Commercial managed services historically via anyscale
  • Remains community-governed open source after nscale acquisition announcement

Sources