The 10 Hottest Cloud Computing Startups Of 2023 (So Far)

From AI and GPU specialists to cloud observability and management stars, here are the 10 hottest cloud computing upstarts of 2023 so far that channel partners need to know about.

There are some significant cloud startups making waves in the market this year as companies demand more cloud computing power and better management with the ultimate goal of cost optimization.

From startups like AI-powered Cast AI and GPU-focused CoreWeave to cloud observability specialists Chronosphere and Yotascale, the innovation engine has been solid in 2023 fueled by new use cases around artificial intelligence and machine learning.

So far this year, cloud companies are focused on helping customers optimize spending by eliminating redundancy and unused cloud infrastructure, improving resiliency, and creating next-generation cloud observability solutions.

[Related: The 10 Coolest New AWS Tools Of 2023 (So Far)]

AWS, Google Cloud And Microsoft Azure

The goal for many of these top cloud computing startups is to help customers better manage and utilize their Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure environments.

In fact, several cloud startups this year formed new partnerships with the likes of the three big cloud market share leaders. For example, CoreWeave recently formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft to grow its AI cloud infrastructure and customer base.

According to IT research firm Gartner, 65 percent of application workloads will be optimal or ready for cloud delivery by 2027, up from 45 percent in 2022. Additionally, 35 percent of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027, up from less than 10 percent last year.

The ever-growing need for new and improved cloud platforms, management, services and automation is being met by these innovative startups. Here’s an in-depth look at the 10 hottest cloud computing startups of 2023 so far:

*Aviatrix Systems

*Cast AI

*Chronosphere

*CoreWeave

*Impossible Cloud

*Prosimo

*Tackle.io

*Upbound

*Vultr

*Yotascale

Aviatrix Systems

Top Executive: Steve Mullaney, President, CEO

Focus: Cloud Networking

Aviatrix Systems creates a consistent, repeatable cloud networking solution to optimize customers cloud operational models along with automation specific to each cloud provider like AWS, Google and Microsoft.

Aviatrix delivers a cloud network backbone for applications by creating a simplified and consistent networking architecture in and across cloud providers. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company helps customers strategically focus on analyzing cloud data to help them understand their usage and cloud optimization options on an ongoing basis.

In a bold move, the cloud startup launched its own distributed cloud firewall in May that offers inspection and policy enforcement into the pathway of application traffic, eliminating the need to redirect traffic to other firewalls or network security services.

Cast AI

Top Executive: Yuri Frayman, CEO

Focus: AI-Power Cloud Optimization

Cast AI offers a cloud optimization platform aiming to cut cloud bills in half by using artificial intelligence and automation to analyze compute resources.

The Maimi-based startup uses AI to identify which compute resources are needed for specific Kubernetes workloads and automatically selects the best combinations, configuring CPUs and memory to prevent over-provisioning. Cast AI positions itself as an all-in-one platform for cloud-native applications.

This year, Cast AI revamped its platform with new features including automated provisioning, selecting and scaling GPU machines across AWS, Google and Azure, as well as automating decommissioning GPU instances with more cost-efficient alternatives. Customers benefit from a suite of solutions including cost monitoring, autoscaling, spot instances automation and container security.

Chronosphere

Top Executive: Martin Mao

Focus: Cloud Observability

Chronosphere says its cloud native observability platform puts engineering teams back in control by taming rampant data growth and cloud native complexity.

The New York City-based company looks to transform customers cloud observability data based on need, context, and utility, enabling clients to store only useful data in order to reduce costs and improve performance. Chronosphere’s fast alerts and issue resolutions ensures reliable and responsive cloud workloads.

This year, the startup raised $115 million during a Series C funding round, bringing total funding to nearly $350 million. Chronosphere also formed a go-to-market partnership with Google Cloud this year to help joint customers resolve incidents faster and control cloud operability costs.

CoreWeave

Top Executive: Michael Intrator, CEO

Focus: Cloud GPUs, AI

CoreWeave is a specialized cloud computing provider that can deliver massive scale of GPUs on the of flexible infrastructure. The startup builds cloud solutions for compute-intensive use cases, such as AI, aimed to be less expensive than the public cloud.

The CoreWave Cloud Architecture is a Kubernetes native cloud that’s purpose-built for large scale, GPU-accelerated workloads designed with engineers in mind. The boom in AI technology has accelerated demand for CoreWeave’s cloud infrastructure to train, serve inference and find-tune models, while the startup also provides access to Nvidia GPUs.

This year, the Roseland, N.J.-based company announced it generated $421 million during its Series B funding round. Additionally, CoreWeave in 2023 formed a blockbuster partnership with Microsoft who hopes to get more access to CoreWeave technology and Nvidia GPUs.

Impossible Cloud

Top Executive: Dr. Kai Wawrzinek, CEO

Focus: Cloud Storage

Impossible Cloud offers a decentralized cloud architecture, based on web3 technology, that supports a nearly unlimited capacity of storage. The startup said it is the first decentralized, enterprise-grade cloud platform offering a suite of services backed by a payment system and business model catering to B2B customers.

Impossible Cloud targets organizations that require performant and secure storage for big data, backups and archives at a lower cost compared to hyperscalers. With just a single line of code, customers can access Impossible Cloud’s cloud storage service.

In June, the startup launched its flagship Partner Program designed to help channel partners implement, demo and integrate its solutions into customers.

Prosimo

Top Executive: Ramesh Prabagaran, CEO

Focus: Cloud Networking

Prosimo offers a simplified multi-cloud infrastructure for distributed enterprises via an integrated stack that combines cloud networking, performance, security, observability, and cost management technologies together.

The San Jose, Calif.-based startup’s solution is powered by data insights and machine learning models with autonomous cloud networking to reduce complexity and risk.

This year, Prosimo launched its Cloud-Native Networking Suite that aligns the cloud and network by bringing the focus on applications while providing a robust underlying networking architecture. Included in Prosimo’s new offering is the Cloud Tracer tool that helps customers track network topology and flow tracing across different regions and data centers.

Tackle.io

Top Executive: John Jahnke, CEO

Focus: Cloud Marketplaces

Tackle.io Cloud is laser focused on providing a single platform to enable companies of all shapes and sizes to launch, build and scale solutions across the largest cloud marketplaces in the world.

Tackle’s Cloud GTM Platform offers Marketplace buyers intent data and streamlines the path to transact through the major cloud providers, while also connecting multiple Cloud Marketplaces, their co-sell portals and Salesforce to scale revenue efficiently.

The Boise, Idaho-based startup offers several solutions that let companies transact through the clouds in a way that matches how B2B buyers want to buy: leveraging cloud budgets, simplifying vendor management with fewer bills and consolidating spend, and buying from marketplace ecosystems from AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and IBM Red Hat.

Upbound

Top Executive: Bassam Tabbara, CEO

Focus: Cloud Control Plane

Upbound is looking to democratize the control plane by allowing platform engineers to get centralized control, governance and stability.

The fully remote startup enables teams to scale to thousands of resources while getting centralized control of all cloud infrastructure including any cloud service provider and any cloud native tool.

Upbound is the creator and maintainer of the popular CNCF open-source project Crossplane, a framework for building cloud native control planes. Thousands of engineering teams have used Crossplane to manage their internal, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions.

Upbound auto-scales as more resources are added and automatically manages major and minor upgrades of core components on behalf of the user, while also offering backups with automatic snapshotting of platform state for disaster recovery.

Vultr

Top Executive: J.J. Kardwell, CEO

Focus: Cloud Infrastructure

Vultr dubs itself the world’s largest privately-held cloud computing platform by serving 1.5 million customers across 185 countries. Vultr offers a slew of cloud computing infrastructure and resources spanning from bare metal options to GPU compute available on demand.

Backed by parent company Constant, Vultr provides shared and dedicated CPU, block and object storage, Nvidia cloud GPUs, as well as networking and Kubernetes solutions. The company’s mission is to make high-performance cloud computing easier to use, affordable and locally accessible.

The West Palm Beach, Fla.-based startup is consistently expanding its data center footprint in order to offer its cloud infrastructure to more customers on a global basis. In May, Vultr Talon was launched to offer customers accelerating computing by enabling GPU sharing so multiple workloads can run on a single Nvidia GPU.

Yotascale

Top Executive: Asim Razzaq, CEO

Focus: Cloud Cost Management

Yotascale specializes in FinOps cloud cost management software with cloud observability and predictability by giving customers a complete view of their multi-cloud infrastructure spending, including containers and Kubernetes.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup seeks to empower engineering teams with accurate cost allocation, recommendations, and continuous cost anomaly detection.

Yotascale provides tools to automate and maintain the resource tags and labels that are foundational to cloud cost management, as well as machine leaning powered forecasting with predictive analytics based on historical spending trends.