The 10 Coolest Cloud Computing Startup Companies of 2022

From artificial intelligence- and machine learning-driven cloud startups to new cloud cost optimization companies, here are the 10 cloud computing starts that made waves in 2022.

10 Cloud Startups Making Waves In 2022

Although Amazon, Microsoft and Google have a stronghold on the cloud services market, there were 10 cloud computing startups that made waves in the cloud computing industry in 2022 looking to win market share through innovation.

Some of these red-hot cloud startups are focused on cutting cloud costs via automation and cost optimization solutions, while others are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to secure and provide business outcomes on data in the cloud.

As more enterprises and businesses move to the cloud, these 10 startups are providing innovative cloud solutions to meet the ever-growing need for cloud computing.

Gartner: $592 Billion In Public Cloud Spending In 2023

Cloud computing startups are entering a competitive, yet still relatively infant market, with only a small portion of applications and workloads currently in the cloud compared to the majority still being on-premise.

IT research firm Gartner expects 2023 to be a record year for public cloud services with cloud migration accelerating for years to come.

Gartner is projecting total worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services to reach $592 billion in 2023, up 21 percent compared with $490 billion in 2022. Approximately $195 billion will be spend on cloud application Software as a Service (SaaS), $150 billion on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and $136 billion on Platform as a Service (PaaS).

“Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature,” said Sid Nag, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “Cloud migration is not stopping.”

CRN breaks down the 10 cloud startups of 2022 who are making inroads with customers, collaborating with cloud leaders and driving the cloud computing innovation engine.

* Alkira

* Amperity

* Aviatrix

* Cast AI

* Cloudbrink

* Kong Inc.

* Privacera

* StarTree

* Solo.io

* Tetrate

Alkira

CEO: Amir Khan

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

The multi-cloud networking startup says its solutions provide the fastest way to unify clouds, sites and users. Alkira automates the building, management and operations of a customers’ network, while its Cloud Area Network offering unifies a customers’ entire network to form a low latency cloud fabric.

In 2022, Alkira launched its Cloud Insights tool to help cloud architects regain control of their cloud infrastructure by providing tailored recommendations on how to improve security, optimize spend and boost cloud networking performance in AWS and Microsoft Azure environments.

Emerging from stealth mode in 2020, Alkira was founded by CEO Amir Khan and his brother Atif Khan—the two brothers who created former SD-WAN standout Viptela, which was acquired by Cisco in 2017 for $610 million.

Amperity

CEO: Barry Padgett

Headquarters: Seattle

Amperity provides a data platform built for turning siloed customer data into next-level client experience in the cloud.

The startup said its enterprise Customer Data Platform has revolutionized the way organizations identify, understand, and connect with their customers by leveraging AI to deliver actionable insights.

In 2022, Amperity formed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to help support digital transformations for companies looking to deploy first-party data strategies.

The startup also recently launched its new Amperity Profile Accelerator that help customers build marketing cloud activations from a more complete and easier-to-use dataset. Taking customer data from all sources, Amperity’s technology builds a single, unified profile of a customer, then seamlessly infuses it into a brand’s marketing cloud solution.

Amperity is expanding internationally including opening a new office in Australia this year, and a data center in the Netherlands.

Aviatrix

CEO: Steve Mullaney

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Led by fearless IT veteran Steve Mullaney, Aviatrix’s secure cloud networking solution directly programs native cloud constructs to maintain the simplicity and automation unique to each cloud provider including AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud.

Aviatrix aims to simplify and accelerate cloud migrations, while optimizing business-critical application availability, performance, security, and cost with multicloud networking software with a consistent operational model in and across cloud service providers.

The company recently launched CostIQ to its Cloud Networking Platform that allows customers to track the actual network traffic from cost centers to the shared cloud resource to accurately breakdown accounts or subscriptions using the shared resources in the public cloud.

The cloud company is doubling its revenue every year and recently raised $200 million in a single funding round.

Cast AI

CEO: Yuri Frayman

Headquarters: Miami

Cast AI is a Kubernetes automation and cloud cost management startup, aiming to cut cloud bills in half for customers on AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

The startup’s platform enables customers to automatically optimize and reduce their cloud costs without any manual intervention, while also managing cloud resources.

Powered by AI, the company’s technology analyzes multiple data points to find an optimal cost-performance ratio. The platform delivers a cost-efficient, high-performing, and resilient infrastructure for all types of Kubernetes workloads.

This year, Cast AI announced the release of Security Insights, a security analysis tool that fully integrates into the startup’s signature cloud optimization platform.

The company recently expanded into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market by working with India-based social media giant ShareChat, a large Google Cloud customer.

Cloudbrink

CEO: Prakash Mana

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California

Startup Cloudbrink uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide hybrid access as-a-Service (HAaaS), to accelerate performance for cloud, data center and SaaS applications.

Targeting the modern hybrid workforce, Cloudbrink’s software deployed in a customer’s cloud environment provides a secure end-to-end connection built on dark network and zero trust principles.

The startup’s mission is to enable an in-office experience for users anywhere while reducing operational complexity for network, security and IT administrators. The company’s access edges, Fast Edges, enables Cloudbrink users to react rapidly to changes in demand.

The company emerged from stealth in November, backed by $25 million in venture funding and led by former Pulse Secure and Citrix executive Prakash Mana, as well as founder Subbu Ponnuswamy, former CTO of both Mojo Networks and KodaCloud.

Kong Inc.

CEO: Augusto Marietti

Headquarters: San Francisco

Kong says its cloud native API platform is the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world.

The startup creates software and managed services that connect APIs and microservices natively across and within clouds, Kubernetes, data centers, and more using intelligent automation. Built on an open-source core, Kong’s service connectivity platform enables organizations to reliably and securely manage the full lifecycle of APIs and services for modern architectures, including microservices, serverless and service mesh

Kong has partnered deeply with AWS in 2022 around co-innovation, co-marketing and co-selling. In fact, some of Kong’s offerings recently became available on the AWS Marketplace, including Kong Konnect—a multi-cloud SaaS API lifecycle management platform.

The startup is expanding oversees with a new office opening up in London this year.

Privacera

CEO: Balaji Ganesan

Headquarters: Fremont, Calif.

Founded by the creators of Apache Ranger, Privacera provides a SaaS-based data access and governance platform that enables analytics teams to access data without compromising compliance with regulations.

The startup provides a unified view and control for securing sensitive data across multiple cloud services such as AWS, Azure, Databricks, GCP, Snowflake, and Starburst. Privacera’s platform helps automate sensitive data discovery, mask sensitive data, and manage high-fidelity policies at petabyte scale on-premises and in the cloud.

The startup’s goal is to help customers use data effectively and responsibly, while guiding them along their data journey.

In 2022, Privacera expanded its data governance capabilities with native AWS Lake Formation integration. The startup also launched new native integration and support for Google Cloud’s Dataproc service.

Solo.io

CEO: Idit Levine

Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.

Application networking startup Solo.io delivers API infrastructure from the edge to service mesh—helping customers adopt, secure, and operate innovative cloud native technologies.

The startup’s Gloo Platform integrates API gateway, Kubernetes Ingress, Service Mesh, and cloud-native networking technologies into a unified, multi-cloud application networking platform.

Solo.io aims to bring developer and operation tooling to manage and federate security and traffic control and tie together the integration points to enable and observe the application network.

In September, the startup and Google unveiled the co-engineered Istio Ambient Mesh, a new dataplane architecture solution, aimed at boosting Solo.io’s service mesh portfolio.

StarTree

CEO: Kishore Gopalakrishna

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

StarTree is a fast-growing cloud analytics startup that combines scale, speed, and ease of use for its analytics platform. Founded by the creators of Apache Pinot, StarTree’s technology has been proven at scale at companies such as LinkedIn, Uber, Stripe, and Walmart.

The StarTree Cloud provides managed hosting for Apache Pinot on all major cloud platforms, including AWS, GCP and Azure. StarTree Cloud enables developers to provision Apache Pinot clusters of different sizes, ingest data from real-time and batch data sources, and run analytics workloads with ultra-low latency.

In August, the startup announced $47 million in a Series B funding round which will be used to accelerate product development and expand sales and marketing.

StarTree launched the StarTree Community Edition this year, which is an integrated package of tools that enable companies to rapidly deploy, manage, and monitor applications.

Tetrate

CEO: Varun Talwar

Headquarters: Milpitas, Calif.

Started by Istio and Envoy co-founders looking to reimagine application networking, Tetrate provides an enterprise service mesh that manages the complexity of hybrid cloud application infrastructure.

The startup’s flagship product, Tetrate Service Bridge, offers an edge-to-workload application connectivity platform to deliver business continuity, agility, and security for enterprises on the journey to the cloud.

Customers get consistent, baked-in observability, runtime security and traffic management in any cloud environment.

Tetrate is a strategic cloud partner of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

In 2022, Tetrate achieved the Red Hay Container Certification and is now in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. The startup’s new collaboration with Red Hat will accelerate customer results with Tetrate Service Bridge on Red Hat OpenShift.