AI Runners connect models running on local machines or private servers directly to Clarifai’s cloud-based AI platform.
AI platform company Clarifai has launched AI Runners, an offering designed to give developers and MLops engineers flexible options for deploying and managing AI models.
Unveiled July 8, AI Runners let users connect models running on local machines or private servers directly to Clarifai’s AI platform via a publicly accessible API, the company said. Noting the rise of agentic AI, Clarifai said AI Runners provide a cost-effective, secure solution for managing the escalating demands of AI workloads, describing them as “essentially ngrok for AI models, letting you build on your current setup and keep your models exactly where you want them, yet still get all the power and robustness of Clarifai’s API for your biggest agentic AI ideas.”
Clarifai said its platform allows developers to run their models or MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools on a local development machine, an on-premises server, or a private cloud cluster. Connection to the Clarifai API then can be done without complex networking, the company said. This means users can keep sensitive data and custom models within their own environment and leverage existing compute infrastructure without vendor lock-in. AI Runners enable serving of custom models through the Clarifai’s publicly accessible API, enabling integration into any application. Users can build multi-step AI workflows by chaining local models with thousands of models available on the Clarifai platform.
AI Runners thereby simplify the development workflow, making AI development accessible and cost-effectve by starting locally, then scaling to production in Kubernetes-based clusters on the Clarifai platform, the company said.
