SaaS Startup Spotinst Gets $35M to Deliver AI-Optimized Cloud Instances

Overprovisioning cloud resources or using the wrong sized instance are among the costliest mistakes that an enterprise using the public cloud can make. With over 30 general purpose cloud instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 alone, it can certainly be confusing for an enterprise to know which instance to choose. But AI could make this process easier and cheaper for enterprises.

SaaS startup Spotinst, which raised $35 million in funding last week led by Highland, has a solution called Elastigroup that uses predictive algorithms to automatically swap applications between spot, reserved and on-demand cloud instances to take advantage of the best pricing and performance. Without Elastigroup, cloud customers can still use spot instances, which tap excess cloud capacity at a discounted rate, but there is a catch: spot instances can become interrupted at any time, only giving customers two minutes notice.

Spotinst explains: “Managing around Spot Instances that can be revoked is unsuitable for AWS customers running high demand, persistent applications that must deliver stable end-user experiences. When Elastigroup identifies a Spot Instance that is about to be ‘interrupted,’ the platform dynamically and transparently transitions to an ‘available’ Spot Instance with absolutely no degradation in application performance.” And if there is no spot instance available, it will pick an unused reserved instance or on-demand instance depending on availability.

Elastigroup not only supports AWS EC2, but also Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. In addition, it supports AWS ECS as well as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm and Nomad for container and microservices use cases. Spotinst says developers can use Elastigroup to configure the underlying infrastructure so they can focus on the containers, not optimizing cluster utilization or administering servers.

“Elastigroup finds the optimal distribution and deployment of multiple instance types into a one, single, powerful cluster as part of a container orchestration platform,” Spotinst said.

In May, CloudHealth Technologies (now owned by VMware) expanded its cloud cost management solution to include support for Amazon ECS so customers can gain more visibility into their container usage and resource spend.

In a blog post announcing the new funding, Spotinst CEO and founder Amiram Shachar said that the investment will support its roadmap, which is largely driven by customer feedback. Some of its customers include Sony, Samsung, Qualcomm and Unilever.

The company has raised $52 million in funding since its launch in 2015 from investors including Intel Capital, Vertex Ventures, and Leaders Fund.

In addition to a new round of funding, Spotinst named Nir Chinsky, formerly the head of Google Cloud at MEA and CEE, general manager of its Elastigroup solution.