Zettlab launching AI-based NAS with powerful AI functionality

Whether you use your NAS for simple block storage, a video filestore for your Plex, or as a coordination point for your multimedia team, you're probably as frustrated as I am about how lackluster the current offerings on the market. I use a large NAS from a manufacturer who has been making some very public and very foolish mistakes with their platform, moving away from flexibility and towards proprietary technology. I wasn't to my hardware refresh point quite yet, but I suddenly find myself motivated to look around.

While GT has taken a fairly firm stance around generative AI use, we do recognize that there are very useful applications for the technology. One such use is for MAM, or Multimedia Asset Management. Current solutions are a software layer installed on top of your asset storage that routinely indexes and provides a search function to be able to say "give me all of the videos with a dog in it" so you can quickly collaborate on video production. Those software MAM functions are very expensive, but it's that very functionality that has me looking at newcomer Zettlab. Zettlab is currently working through a Kickstarter effort (and blowing the doors off – they've already exceeded their $9000 goal by over $800,000 (and no, that's not a typo) where they're introducing four flavors of AI-based NAS. While we've not gotten our hands on it (yet!), the functionality punch list is very compelling.

Zettlab is looking to launch with two devices in the June/July timeframe, and second set in October of 2025. The first two, the D4 and D6, are aimed at home use, providing up to 148 TB of capability (the 4 and 6 refers to the number of bays), with a D6 Ultra and D8 Ultra to follow. The first two devices are utilizing an RK3588 processor for its AI functionality, providing 6Tops of NPU power. This means the device will be able to handle a staggering six TRILLION operations per second for AI search, OCR, and transcription on the D4, with full AI Chat and Auto Categorization functionality coming to the D6. Compelling as these are, it's the D6 Ultra and D8 Ultra that has me really raising an eyebrow.

If you're unfamiliar with cloud-based AI functionality, it's essentially a "pay for what you consume" model. For indexing to occur, the device would require external access to "crawl" the media periodically, meaning you're paying for that whether you're using it actively or not. The D6 Ultra and D8 Ultra will have an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor in it instead of the RK3588, unlocking a full offline AI capable of handling a large language model locally, as well as AIGC – AI Generated Content. AIGC doesn't always mean image generation (though that's possible), but can also unlock things like AI-guided video analysis, editing, and production (on a frame-by-frame basis), as well as realtime transcription, storyboarding, document analysis and indexing, semantic search (that is to say you'd be able to search your videos for that one time you said "Stay frosty!" without endless scrolling), and so much more. Better still, the Ultra devices will be capable of a staggering 34Tops, and with 16GB of DDR5 memory, dual m.2 support for your most-accessed files, dual 10GbE NIC, USB 4.0 support, and so much more. There's even a connection point for PCIe 4.0x8 expansion for multi-device RAID all the way up to 10. The part that I love most? It's all handled locally – a first for any NAS I've seen.

If you move quickly, you can snap up these devices for impossibly low prices. Better still, they already have tariff chaos priced in, so these prices will remain stable. That said, they won't last long – if you're in the market, you might want to act now.

If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited for what I see on paper with the Zettlab AI NAS, and all of them are compelling. We'll be taking a closer look at them later this month with some hands-on coverage, so stay tuned!

You can back the Zettlab AI NAS at their official Kickstarter right here.