CAST AI, the leading SaaS company specializing in cost optimization for customers running cloud-native applications in AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, has completed a $10 million Series A round led by Cota Capital, with Samsung Next and additional investors participating. The raise will propel the company in advancing the development of its CAST AI™ Autonomous Kubernetes cloud management platform.

The cloud computing industry is ripe for disruption as customer cloud costs continue to soar. In 2020 alone, approximately $17 billion of cloud overspend was due to inefficient tool selection and lack of ability to intelligently scale capacity to match application requirements. With the evolution of machine learning, the CAST AI team has developed an AI platform that has saved, on average, between 60% and 90% of total annual cloud expenditures for AWS customers.

The Company is also pleased to announce that its platform now supports both Google and Microsoft Azure public cloud platforms.

“Managing cloud deployments effectively to control costs has become a priority for organizations of all sizes,” said Bobby Yazdani, Cota Capital founder, and partner. “We are excited to partner with the CAST AI team, as we believe in the company’s ability to address cloud-native optimization challenges.”

The funding round will accelerate CAST AI product development initiatives and ensure the Company’s rapidly growing market position. “We are thrilled to have Cota Capital lead our Series A round,” said Yuri Frayman, CAST AI co-founder and CEO. “As we continue on our mission to utilize artificial intelligence for optimizing cloud deployments, we will use the additional funds to further accelerate development and delivery of our platform and provide real and measurable value to our customers.”

“The adoption of Kubernetes continues to grow as containers and microservice architecture become the defacto standard to serve modern applications at scale,” said Raymond Liao, Managing Director, Samsung Next. “Our team is thrilled to participate in CAST AI’s latest round, as the company advances its quest to make Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) more efficient and on budget.”

Optimizing and autonomously managing Kubernetes for any cloud service is at the core of CAST AI’s strategy. By connecting to existing clusters with a single click, users receive an instant savings report and can immediately identify cost-saving opportunities. CAST AI observes and learns a business’ cloud environment and precisely determines the resources needed for optimal utilization. The true value of the platform comes with full automation while allowing customers to set optimization parameters. DevOps Engineers can focus on higher-level challenges and opportunities while leaving low-level optimizations to CAST AI.

“With CAST AI, our applications are using a more efficient combination of cloud services, and we have already reduced our annualized cloud costs by millions of dollars,” said Mark Weiler, SVP Engineering at Branch.io. 

This announcement follows the company’s launch of its AWS cost optimization tool and a pioneering release of the industry-first single-cluster multi-cloud solution.

CAST AI will be demonstrating the latest features of the platform, including customer use-cases, at KubeCon & CloudNativeCon North America from October 13th through October 16th, 2021. You can join the company virtually or in person at the KubeCon event hosted in Los Angeles, California.

CAST clients span industries such as e-commerce, adtech, fintech, data analytics, cybersecurity, and SaaS application delivery. To learn more about CAST AI, visit Cast.ai or follow @cast_ai on Twitter.

About CAST AI

CAST AI is the autonomous Kubernetes management platform that cuts cloud bills in half for AWS, GCP, and Azure customers. CAST AI analyzes millions of data points, always looking for the optimal balance of high performance at the lowest cost. The platform delivers a cost-efficient, high-performing, and resilient infrastructure for every Kubernetes workload. CAST AI is headquartered in Miami, Fla., with a European office in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

About Cota Capital

Cota Capital is a San Francisco-based investment firm focused on private and public modern enterprise technology companies. Cota invests financial and knowledge capital in bold leaders at companies delivering on the promise and potential of their modern technologies. With more than $1 billion in assets under management, the firm has invested in more than 80 private and 30 public technology companies since its launch in 2015. 

About Samsung Next

Samsung NEXT partners with innovators around the world to build ideas into products grow products into businesses, and scale businesses that leverage and transform Samsung’s ecosystem.