Vapor IO

Vapor IO is a data center colocation provider for edge computing, mainly offering micro data centers. Currently, Vapor mainly serves four metropolitan areas. The company offers its Kinetic Edge products to provide ease in edge usage for clients by addressing networking- and location-related issues. It was formed with the intention of minimizing edge-related CapEx and operating expenses for enterprises.

Through its densely situated data centers (in locations including bases of cell towers and enterprise buildings), the company is poised to cater to emerging tech such as city-scale Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous vehicles (AVs), which require low latency performance. Moreover, it offers superior uptime of 12 nines of reliability, higher than vXchnge’s five nines. 

Vapor IO was expanding the coverage of its data centers to around 36 major markets in the US (through 70–100 data centers), through which it expected to reach around 70% of the nation’s population (as of February 2024, the company had completed its expansion into 33 of these markets).

 In November 2020, Vapor IO signed bare-metal server provider Hivelocity, as a customer who intended to deploy servers across the 36 major markets. Hivelocity already provides services in Vapor IO’s Atlanta data center and allows its customers to order and scale server capacity similar to public clouds.

In October 2023, Vapor IO launched the "Monetize the AI Edge" program by offering real-time AI services without the need for large on-premises infrastructure. The program enabled partners to deliver bundled AI services through Vapor IO's shared and neutral host infrastructure, targeting applications like video security, public safety, retail, and manufacturing.

Key customers and partnerships

In April 2021, Vapor IO partnered with VMware, Dell, and other cloud and infrastructure providers to form the “Open Grid.” Open Grid is a software-defined system that spans the globe and looks to re-architecture the internet, with an edge focus. The alliance looks to gain expertise from a range of providers, including hardware, software defined networking (SDN), virtualization, and automation. Moreover in January 2023, Vapor IO partnered with Cellnex Telecom , a European wireless telecommunications operator, to expand its edge network to Europe. The company had plans to deploy its first network in Barcelona and expand throughout Europe over the following couple of years by leveraging Cellnex’s infrastructure. 

In February 2024, Vapor IO and Supermicro joined forces to launch Zero Gap AI, an innovative platform powered by NVIDIA's technology. The aim was to deliver localized AI and 5G services at a reduced cost.

Vapor IO announced its integration with the Google Cloud network and Anthos in June 2021. Through the partnership, the companies would primarily enable communications service providers to deploy a 5G radio access network (RAN) and mobile edge computing solutions in multi-cloud, shared infrastructure environments.

Funding and financials

In its latest funding round in January 2020, the company raised USD 90 million in Series C funding led by Berkshire Partners.