TA Ventures is a network-driven VC firm investing in early-stage tech startups shaping the industries of tomorrow, primarily across Europe and North America. Our typical initial check for Pre-Seed and Seed companies is $100-250k. TA Ventures also provides follow-on investments. We offer speed of execution, proactive support, and access to a broad international network. Drawing upon our network, we support our portfolio companies by proactively soliciting large, growth-minded co-investors in subsequent rounds. We utilize our industry knowledge and network to give portfolio companies and partner VCs access to highly skilled and cost-effective R&D outsourcing teams in Central and Eastern Europe.

TA Ventures

The hardest thing for early stage B2B Startups is to find the first customer who can validate your Product Market Fit and grow your business together. Since 2011, they have created more than 100 partnerships between startups and Fortune 500 companies by leveraging their CXO network with Global Conglomerates.

DNX Ventures

Florida Funders is a Florida-focused Venture Capital Firm and Angel Investor syndicate with over 1,500 members. Led by successful entrepreneurs and seasoned investors, it partners with its portfolio companies to set them up for success. Its team scours the state of Florida to find the best early-stage ventures across all industries. It blends the best of equity crowdfunding, angel investing, and venture capital to generate strong returns for its investors while supporting the next generation of the Sunshine States' most promising entrepreneurs.

Florida Funders

Cota Capital is an SEC-registered multi-stage investment firm focused on private and public enterprise technology companies. Cota has invested in more than 100 private and public technology companies since inception. Cota’s overall Mission is to deliver impactful outcomes through principle-guided investment in modern enterprise technologies.

Cota Capital

Samsung NEXT Ventures is an investment arm of Samsung NEXT, a multifaceted innovation group within Samsung Electronics dedicated to identifying new growth opportunities that will define the next decade. The firm prefers to invest in artificial intelligence, fintech, blockchain, health technology, infrastructure, and media technology sectors.

Samsung NEXT

Creandum is a leading European early-stage venture capital firm backing some of Europe's most successful tech companies including Spotify, iZettle, Depop, Klarna, KRY, Epidemic Sound and Small Giant Games. Creandum has offices in Stockholm, Berlin, London and San Francisco.

Creandum

SAV(Scale Asia Ventures) is a Palo Alto-based early-stage venture fund focused on Enterprise Software, Data-driven Life Sciences, and AI-powered Vertical Industries. Fund backers include institutional funds, prominent family offices, and publicly-traded conglomerates in the U.S as well as S. Korea, Japan, and Singapore. SAV is committed to providing its portfolios with strong U.S. and Asia market expertise and a unique global network of strategic corporate partners.

SAV (Scale Asia Ventures)

Web Summit hosts the world's largest gathering of startups, unicorns, VCs & media. Web Summit Ventures invests in the best of this network.

Web Summit Ventures

Vintage is a global venture firm that invests in venture funds and startups via primary and secondary transactions. Through its secondary strategy, the firm acquires limited partnership interests in Israeli, European, and select U.S. venture capital funds as well as holdings in technology startups. It also invests directly into growth-stage startups across all 3 geographies, alongside partner VC funds.

Vintage Investment Partners

Uncorrelated Ventures invests in early-stage infrastructure software companies. The firm was founded in 2019 by Salil Deshpande and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.

Uncorrelated Ventures

CAST AI

CAST AI is a cloud optimization platform that reduces cloud costs, optimizes DevOps, and automates disaster recovery. CAST AI's intelligent optimization engine delivers a cost-efficient, high-performing, and resilient infrastructure for every Kubernetes workload.  CAST AI brings resource and cost optimization to Kubernetes using an AI-driven optimization engine that applies cluster changes based on real-time workload conditions. It selects the most cost-effective instance types and bin-packs pods for maximum utilization. The platform uses spot instances that offer 70 to 90% discounts and are automatically selected for any stateless workloads. CAST AI also sets pod scaling parameters to achieve optimal application performance while maximizing cost savings. Moreover, users get detailed cost reports to enable forecasting expenses at the level of the project, cluster, namespace, and deployment, down to individual microservices. CAST AI provides an opinionated Kubernetes implementation that hides the infrastructure complexities with automation. So DevOps engineers no longer have to deal with IaaS complexity and can finally focus on higher-order cloud-native abstractions and concepts. They can create and manage CAST AI components through API, CLI, and Terraform to automate their infrastructure lifecycle management. CAST AI also provides services for in-cluster observability (logging, tracing, and metrics) and built-in security (encryption at rest and in transit). CAST AI protects workloads against downtime with a Disaster Avoidance strategy based on cloud neutrality and multi-cloud capabilities. To achieve 100% uptime, CAST AI adopts the active approach to Disaster Recovery by stretching applications and data across multiple clouds so that a cloud failure never becomes a disaster. Underlying all of our technology is a custom multi-cloud networking layer that makes the magic happen.

<div>CAST AI is an all-in-one platform for Kubernetes automation, cloud cost optimization, security, and cost management.&nbsp;</div>

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

CAST AI is a cloud-based, all-in-one platform for the optimization, automation, security, and cost management of Kubernetes.

Platforms to make the most of cloud infrastructure

Cloud Optimization Tools

Ferréol "Fé" Hoppenot on LinkedIn: CAST AI Appoints Pierre-Andre Liduena as Chief Financial Officer

<div>
 
 CAST AI is an all-in-one platform for Kubernetes automation, cloud cost optimization, security, and cost management.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 CAST AI leverages automation for quick autoscaling, instance selection, bin packing, rightsizing, and more to provide savings on cloud spend and compute resources optimization. Further, it provides continuous visibility into Kubernetes clusters for real-time, in-depth analyses and management, allowing users to compare cluster costs for better resource planning and to derive cost savings.
 
 
 
 
 CAST AI targets teams that want to save on cloud costs without increasing their workload. It is also for teams that want to automate tasks related to cost optimization, such as instance selection, rightsizing, and autoscaling.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 Cast AI serves the entertainment, energy, SaaS, pharmaceutical, cybersecurity, social media, ecommerce and FinTech industries, among many others. Some of its clients include Project44, Ampeers Energy, Phlexglobal, Delio, and La Fourche.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23575">
 November 2023
 </a>
 , 
 CAST AI announced a USD 35 million Series B funding round led by Vintage Investment Partners. Other investors who participated in the round included Creandum and Uncorrelated Ventures. The raised funds are earmarked for product development and expanding the startup&rsquo;s team, which is a little over 100 employees. 
 
 
 
 
 
</div>

SingleStore is a company that provides a distributed SQL database platform for real-time analytics and operational applications.SingleStore’s platform combines the scalability of NoSQL with the querying capabilities of SQL. It enables organizations to ingest, process, and analyze large volumes of data in real-time, making it ideal for applications that require fast and accurate data processing. SingleStore solves the problem of handling massive amounts of data and delivering real-time insights for use cases such as real-time analytics, operational analytics, and high-velocity transactional applications.SingleStore's competitive advantage is its ability to handle analytical and transactional workloads in a single platform. It allows businesses to consolidate their data infrastructure, simplifying management and reducing operational costs.SingleStore operates with a sales model that includes direct sales and partnerships with technology and solution providers. It offers different pricing and licensing options tailored to the needs of its customers, including subscription-based models.Key customers and partnershipsSingleStore serves some of the largest tech and non-tech enterprises across various industries, including Comcast, Cisco, Akamai Technologies, Fiverr, Goldman Sachs, Sony, Siemens, Hulu.SingleStore partners with all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud) and has technology partnerships with Dell, Red Hat, Intel, HP Enterprise, and Looker.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, SingleStore’s latest fundraising was in October 2022 from a USD 30 million Series F round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Prosperity7 Ventures. The funds were slated to fuel SingleStore’s growth and various strategic initiatives.

SingleStore

Platform9 is an open-distributed cloud company that offers solutions for managing hybrid clouds, Kubernetes, and more. Platform9 offers several products and solutions, including Managed Kubernetes, Managed OpenStack, and Managed Bare Metal.Managed Kubernetes allows businesses to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure, while Managed OpenStack offers a simplified way to deploy and manage private clouds. Managed Bare Metal enables businesses to run Kubernetes, OpenStack, and other workloads on dedicated hardware with bare-metal performance.Platform9 claims to deliver a seamless Kubernetes experience across any infrastructure. Platform9's SaaS-managed Kubernetes solution offers a single view to manage Kubernetes clusters running on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure, including bare metal servers, vSphere, and public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, providing customers with a unified Kubernetes experience. In addition, Platform9 offers automated security patching, on-demand upgrades, self-healing clusters, multi-version support, and audit logging.Platform9 has a subscription-based sales model. It offers its services on a pay-as-you-go basis, with pricing based on the number of managed nodes or instances, with optional add-ons for additional features and support.Key customers and partnershipsPlatform9 targets enterprise customers who run and manage Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies on distributed cloud services, whether on-premises or in the public cloud. Its customers typically include large organizations with complex IT environments, such as financial services, healthcare, technology, and retail companies.As of mid-2022, Platform9 catered to more than 60 enterprise clients and powered 40,000 nodes across private, public, and edge clouds.Platform9 has partnerships with various cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Additionally, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32723">August 2024</a>, Platform9 partnered with Fairwinds, a managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider, to tackle issues related to Kubernetes over-provisioning and cost management costs in public cloud deployments.

Platform9

<div>
 
 Mirantis is a technology company that provides cloud-native software and services to help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure.&nbsp;
 
 
 Mirantis specializes in open-source software, focusing on Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies. Its core offering is the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform, a managed Kubernetes service that provides a complete set of tools for deploying and managing containerized applications. The platform helps organizations adopt and scale Kubernetes quickly and easily, with features like automated provisioning, integrated monitoring, and self-service access to resources. Mirantis also offers professional services including consulting, training, and support for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies.
 
 
 Mirantis sells its products and services through a subscription-based model. Customers can choose from various annual subscription plans, depending on their needs.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Mirantis focuses on enterprise customers who deploy and manage large-scale private clouds. Some of its high-profile customers include Volkswagen Group, Soci&eacute;t&eacute; G&eacute;n&eacute;rale, S&amp;P Global, Paypal, Volkswagen, and GSK.
 
 
 Mirantis also has technology partnerships with several companies, including Arm, Cisco, Entrust, and Fujitsu, and hardware vendors like Dell EMC, Intel, and Supermicro.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22579">
 October 2023
 </a>
 , specialty finance company Horizon Technology Finance provided a USD 35 million venture loan facility to Mirantis, Inc. A sum of USD 20 million was initially funded.
 
</div>

Mirantis

Rafay Systems is a cloud-native platform that automates deployment, life cycle management, and scaling of containerized applications across all cloud infrastructure.Rafay's platform provides enterprises with the tools to deploy and manage containerized applications, microservices, and serverless functions in a scalable and efficient way. The platform provides features including multi-cluster management, automated workload scaling, automated application recovery, and granular application-level access controls. Rafay also provides a Kubernetes-native API gateway that simplifies managing and securing microservices, and includes capabilities to include support for graphics processing unit-based workloads.Additionally, Rafay Systems offers an AI suite to simplify AI application development and deployment. This suite includes pre-configured LLMOps Playgrounds, a turnkey MLOps pipeline, central management of LLM providers and prompts, and AI data source integrations and governance. It also offers a cost optimization suite to help IT professionals manage Kubernetes expenses with dynamic cluster scaling, auto-rightsizing, policy application, and simplified infrastructure.Rafay has a subscription-based sales model and offers its platform as a service. The pricing is based on the number of clusters, nodes per cluster, and the amount of data transferred.Key customers and partnershipsRafay’s target customer segments are enterprises, service providers, and software vendors. Some of its notable clients include Verizon, Equinix, Samsung, Moneygram, and the US Air Force.In 2022, Rafay launched its Technical Alliance Program (TAP), which brings together technology and solutions providers to develop joint solutions to simplify and streamline Kubernetes management and operations. Partners of the program include GitLab Inc., F5 NGINX, MinIO, New Relic, and Sysdig. Meanwhile, Rafay’s public cloud and managed Kubernetes partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle.

Rafay Systems

Docker, Inc. is a technology company developing productivity tools centered around Docker, a software container platform that automates the deployment of code inside containers.Docker, Inc's major commercial products include Docker Hub, a central repository for containers, and Docker Desktop, a GUI application that enables Windows and Mac users to manage containers.Docker's ease of use, portability, resource efficiency, scalability, and strong ecosystem has made it a popular solution for deploying and managing applications in various environments.Docker has a subscription-based sales model. Docker also collaborates with various channel partners, including technology resellers, system integrators, and value-added distributors to expand its reach.Moreover, Docker has made several strategic acquisitions to enhance its capabilities: AtomicJar (2023), Nestybox (2022), SocketPlane (2015), and Tutum (2015), among others.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the platform was used by more than 18 million developers. As of March 2022, the company served more than 56,000 commercial customers, including Adobe, Netflix, PayPal, Verizon, and Target.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27771">March 2024</a>, Docker expanded its partnership with Red Hat to integrate Testcontainers Cloud into the Red Hat OpenShift platform. This partnership aimed to streamline the process of building cloud-native applications and facilitate real-world testing using Docker containers.Funding and financialsIn March 2022, Docker raised USD 105 million in a Series C round led by Bain Capital Ventures at a valuation of USD 2.1 billion. The funds were to accelerate investments in its product and go-to-market initiatives, such as increasing investments in developer productivity, trusted content, and ecosystem partnerships and investing in new channels and geographies.Docker’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) was more than USD 50 million in 2021.

Docker

Vendors offering cloud-native infrastructure or provisioning, which is the first layer in the cloud-native landscape. It encompasses tools to create and harden the foundation of cloud-native apps.

Vendors offering execution environment (runtime) solutions. This encompasses everything a container needs to run in a cloud-native environment, including the code used to start a container.

Vendors offering solutions for application definition and development. This layer focuses on the tools that enable engineers to build cloud-native applications

Vendors offering orchestration and management solutions including tools to handle running and connecting cloud-native applications.

Vendors offering observability, including tools to understand a cloud system from its external outputs, measured by CPU time, memory, disk space, latency, errors, etc.

Vendors that bundle different tools from different layers together into a platform, solving a larger problem. These can include an orchestration tool, a container runtime, service discovery, networking, an API gateway, etc.

Provide tools to design and build applications for deployment and operation in cloud environments

Disruptors are using Generative AI for AI-based assistants and help-bots, while others provide the technology for developing and deploying Gen AI applications and models.

CAST AI is a cloud-based, all-in-one platform for the optimization, automation, security, and cost management of Kubernetes.CAST AI leverages automation for quick autoscaling, instance selection, bin packing, rightsizing, and more to provide savings on cloud spend and compute resources optimization. Further, it provides continuous visibility into Kubernetes clusters for real-time in-depth analysis and management, allowing users to compare cluster costs for better resource planning and to derive cost savings.The platform also provides cloud-agnostic Kubernetes security posture management capabilities, including vulnerability assessments, configuration checks, and prioritization. It provides users with insights to ensure cluster configurations align with industry best practices and security system benchmarks, along with a list of potential fixes for any highlighted issues.CAST AI operates a consumption-based sales model, with pricing based on the number of CPUs and clusters.Key customers and partnershipCAST AI clients span multiple industries, including energy, entertainment, pharmaceuticals, government, cybersecurity, FinTech, social media, and more. Some notable customers are ShareChat, Zest, Iterable, Switchboard, Surfshark, and Phlexglobal.

Harness is a cloud-based end-to-end software delivery platform that provides cloud cost management (CCM), among other modules.Harness CCM offers a holistic set of features to facilitate cost optimization of the development pipeline. It provides a single customizable dashboard to unify data and insights across multiple departments and cloud vendors. Further, it delivers automated anomaly detection and resource allocation to optimize continuous delivery (CD) workflows and allows for seamless integration with existing monitoring tools for an overview of cloud spend.Harness operates a consumption-based sales model with pricing based on the annual cloud spend.Key customers and partnershipsHarness CCM’s clientele ranges from individuals to large-scale enterprises across various industries, including healthcare, IT, finance, service, and SaaS. Notable customers include Synopsys, Relativity, Discover Dollar, and Carvana.Harness collaborates with many industry leaders to ensure wide service provision and integrations with various tools and platforms. Some of its key technology partners are HashiCorp, Benchmark, and Insight.

Harness

Cloudchipr is a company specializing in cloud cost optimization and automation solutions.CloudChippr helps businesses reduce cloud expenses by identifying inefficiencies and recommending cost-saving measures. It provides real-time insights into cloud usage, automates cost allocation, and offers actionable recommendations for optimizing resources. Additionally, CloudChippr simplifies cloud management by integrating with popular cloud platforms, enabling organizations to maximize their cloud investments and minimize waste while ensuring optimal performance across cloud environments.Cloudchipr adopts a subscription-based approach.Key customers and partnershipsCloudchipr’s customer base includes DISQO, ServiceTitan, Activeloop, AimHub, Podcastle, and SuperAnnotate.Cloudchipr Cloud provides native integrations with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Cloudchipr

Vega Cloud is a technology company offering a cloud cost optimization and management platform.The Vega Cloud Platform provides visibility and organization of cloud infrastructure with a unified view across major cloud providers. Vega Cloud platform provides near real-time data to influence spending and make intelligent trade-off decisions between cost, quality, and speed. The platform's proprietary unit economics and outcomes-oriented approach to cloud infrastructure optimization uses data context and automation to help businesses make decisions efficiently.Vega Cloud employs a subscription-based pricing model.Key customers and partnershipsVega Cloud provides native integrations with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.The company’s clientele includes entertainment companies like CBS, Paramount, MTV, VH1 and others such as ITRON, Cal Poly, and ClearData.

Vega Cloud

StackZone offers a suite of technology solutions for optimizing and enhancing various aspects of AWS cloud operations.StackZone's range of products and features encompasses AWS management tools, infrastructure optimization solutions, security services, application performance management, cost optimization solutions, analytics and reporting, automation, and support/consulting services. These offerings cater to various IT aspects, including resource management, performance enhancement, cost reduction, security, and operational efficiency.StackZone employs a direct sales model.Key customers and partnershipsStackZone’s customer base includes enterprises in various industries. Among its customers are The Weir Group, Sigma Móvil, Vitaccess, Triario, and Keroppa.

StackZone

mist.io provides an open-source multi-cloud management platform aimed at optimizing costs and streamlining operations.mist.io’s unified dashboard and APIs provide real-time visibility into hybrid cloud environments to track, understand, and govern cloud spend and resource utilization. The platform also provides orchestration automation for repeatable deployments and the ability to create custom policies to control infrastructure access. Moreover, the platform eliminates the need for migration by allowing users to control legacy bare-metal servers from the same interface used for cloud infrastructure.The platform operates a pay-as-you-go and subscription-based sales model.Key customers and partnershipsmist.io is utilized globally in several industries. Some notable customers are SevOne, the European Parliament, the National Bank of Greece, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Windstream Enterprise.mist.io offers integrations with over 15 service providers and technologies. Some key technology integrators are AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and VMware.

Mist.io

Tools that improve performance per spend by offering visibility and insights as well as leveraging pricing models such as reserved and spot instances. These also provide financial guardrails to enforce budgetary limits and other cost-saving opportunity recommendations

Tools designed to streamline and simplify various tasks and processes related to cloud computing. These help organizations manage and optimize their cloud infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and reduce manual intervention

Tools that provide comprehensive features and functionalities to safeguard cloud resources and maintain adherence to industry-specific regulations for data protection and overall security

All companies in this hub provide optimization services for cloud-based platforms

Provides support for governance & regulatory compliance and transparency & insights regarding cloud spend

A few companies use AI/ML algorithms for workload optimization and deployment automation

DISRUPTOR_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 <ul>
 <li>CAST AI has launched a new tool called Automated Workload Rightsizing at the Kubecon + CloudNativeCon conference. The service aims to optimize Kubernetes workloads for better efficiency and cost management.</li>
 <li>The tool has two key features: automatically resizing a cloud-native application based on actual resource consumption and reallocating resources to other applications.</li>
 <li>In addition to the Automated Workload Rightsizing tool, CAST AI has introduced the PrecisionPack scheduler. This scheduler uses a bin-packing algorithm to ensure pods run on specific nodes, increasing availability. Both tools can be used alongside the company's Autoscaler, Spot Instance Management, and Cost Reporting Suite of tools.</li>
 </ul>
</div>

CAST AI

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