From CoreWeave and Wiz to Cast AI and Prosimo, here are the 10 cloud startups of 2024 that you need to know about.

Startup companies are paving the cloud computing highway of the future, which is currently being fueled by global demand for artificial intelligence solutions.

“The use of AI technologies in IT and business operations is unabatedly accelerating the role of cloud computing in supporting business operations and outcomes,” said Sid Nag, vice president analyst at IT research firm Gartner, in a statement. “Cloud use cases continue to expand with increasing focus on distributed, hybrid, cloud-native, and multi-cloud environments supported by a cross-cloud framework.”

Nearly all of the 10 companies on CRN’s list of top cloud computing startups of 2024 have a solid AI strategy and portfolio that is helping to drive cloud adoption, including cloud security superstar Wiz as well as cloud infrastructure and GPU star CoreWeave.

Some other cool cloud startups include multi-cloud networking startup Prosimo, cloud management specialist Pulumi, as well as Kubernetes specialists Cast AI and Spectro Cloud.

[Related: The 10 Coolest GenAI Products and AI Tools Of 2024]

$313 Billion Cloud Servies Market

Businesses of all shapes and sizes continue to pour money into cloud computing companies to fuel their artificial intelligence initiatives.

Gartner expects spending on public cloud services to reach a whopping $723 billion in 2025, up from $596 billion in 2024. This would represent a nearly 22 percent annual growth rate.

Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services is also accelerating, according to market research firm Synergy Research.

Synergy said enterprise spending on cloud services climbed to $313 billion over the past 12 months from the fourth quarter 2023 to third quarter 2024. During the third quarter of 2024, enterprise spending on cloud services hit a record high of $84 billion, representing an increase of 23 percent year over year.

From Tackle.io and Operant AI to Upbound and Ori Global Cloud and Wiz, here are the 10 coolest startups paving the way for computing, AI solutions and next-level cloud innovation.

Cast AI

Top Executive: Yuri Frayman, CEO

Headquarters: Miami

Cast AI owns a Kubernetes automation platform that utilizes advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze and automatically optimize clusters in real time, aimed at reducing cloud costs, improving security and boosting DevOps and engineering productivity.

The startup recently launched AI Enabler, an optimization tool that streamlines the deployment of large language models (LLMs) in the cloud. Cast AI also formed a partnership with AI open source superstar Hugging Face to dramatically reduce the cost of deploying LLMs in the cloud.

Overall, Cast AI says its Kubernetes platform can cut the cost of Amazon Web Services, Azure and GCP customers’ cloud costs by over 50 percent.

CoreWeave

Top Executive: Michael Intrator, CEO

Headquarters: Roseland, N.J.

One of the hottest cloud startups on the planet is CoreWeave, which is making waves throughout the industry by being a top provider of Nvidia microprocessors.

CoreWeave’s cloud architecture is Kubernetes native that’s purpose-built for large scale, GPU-accelerated workloads. Designed with engineers and innovators in mind, CoreWeave says it offers unparalleled access to a broad range of compute solutions that are up to 35-times faster and 80 percent less expensive than legacy cloud providers.

In May, CoreWeave had a $19 billion valuation following a $1.1 billion Series C investment round. Overall, the startup has raised a whopping $14 billion in total from investors including Cisco, NetApp and Nvidia, along with a slew of private equity firms.

Ori Industries (Ori Global Cloud)

Top Executive: Mahdi Yahya, CEO

Headquarters: London

Ori Global Cloud is building the backbone of the AI era with an end-to-end platform that not only provides GPU compute power, but also a software layer designed to optimize the use of cloud resources.

Ori Global Cloud, part of Ori Industries, is looking to set the standard in GPU cloud infrastructure with on-demand access to GPUs, public and private cloud cost-optimization offerings and owns a tight partnership with Nvidia. The startup recently deployed a private cloud cluster with 1,024 Nvidia H100 GPUs.

Overall, the startup said that it’s driving the private AI cloud of the future by fusing simplicity with performance, competitive pricing and flexibility to empower businesses to scale AI and machine learning models with complete control over their data.

Operant AI

Top Executive: Vrajesh Bhavsar, CEO

Headquarters: San Francisco

Cloud-native security startup Operant AI provides runtime security enforcement, guardrails and instant insights to protect customer cloud applications.

The startup dubs itself as owning the world’s only Runtime AI Application Protection Platform that actively shields every layer of live applications from infrastructure to APIs. Operant’s approach to securing modern applications brings together instant live blueprints of every application layer—from processes to services to APIs—while also providing extensive active protection through its Adaptive Internal Firewalls and Proactive Protection Guardrails.

This year, Operant AI raised $10 million in a Series A funding round that will be used to accelerate team and product expansion.

Prosimo

Top Executive: Ramesh Prabagaran, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Multi-cloud networking software startup Prosimo offers an integrated stack that combines cloud networking, performance, security, observability, and cost management—all powered by data insights and machine learning models with autonomous cloud networking to reduce complexity and risk.

Cloud-forward enterprises, including many Fortune 100 companies, have successfully adopted Prosimo to roll out revenue-generating applications, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate business outcomes.

This year, Prosimo formed a partnership with cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks to integrate Palo Alto’s Prisma Cloud technology with Prosimo’s Full Stack Cloud Transit platform that lets customers put firewalls as close as possible to the workloads they protect to route and manage that traffic.

Pulumi

Top Executive: Joe Duffy, CEO

Headquarters: Seattle

Pulumi offers an infrastructure management platform for everything running in the cloud, providing a unique way for businesses to automate, secure and manage infrastructure across clouds.

The startups platform unites developers, infrastructure experts, and security teams to improve time to market, automatic security, and help tame cloud costs. Two years ago, Pulumi began infusing AI into the platform, while also developing new products like Pulumi IaC (Infrastructure as Code), its cloud security offering ESC (Environments, Secrets and Configuration), and Pulumi Insights for cloud management of asset inventory and resources.

Powered by open source, programming languages, and generative AI, Pulumi enables infrastructure, development, and security teams to seamlessly collaborate with less risk for its over 2,700 customers.

Spectro Cloud

Top Executive: Tenry Fu, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Spectro Cloud provides its Palette Kubernetes management platform that supports both container workloads and virtual machines at scale. IT operations teams are empowered to support their developers with curated Kubernetes stacks and tools based on their specific needs, with granular governance and enterprise security.

The startup’s technology can scale across on-premises hardware, public cloud, multi-cloud and edge environments via its Palette software platform that helps drive Kubernetes adoption.

In late 2024, Spectro Cloud raised $75 million in a Series C funding round with the goal of accelerating product innovation, particularly in edge computing, and scale new go-to-market partnerships and technology alliances.

Tackle.io

Top Executive: John Jahnke, CEO

Headquarters: Boise, Idaho

With cloud marketplaces like AWS Marketplace and the Azure Marketplace becoming ever so important to channel partners and IT leaders, Tackle.io has quickly become an industry leader in cloud marketplaces by helping businesses identify the right buyers, co-sell together and more efficiently transact through marketplaces.

The startup offers an end-to-end Cloud GTM Platform for faster, easier, data-informed selling through cloud marketplaces. The company works with hundreds of companies to scale their go-to-market via cloud marketplace.

This year, Tackle.io launched the Cloud GTM Ecosystem Partner Program to help channel partners and independent software vendors (ISVs) generate more revenue in cloud marketplaces as well as boost collaboration with cloud companies.

Upbound

Top Executive: Bassam Tabbara, CEO

Headquarters: Seattle

Upbound is the top provider of self-service cloud platforms based on control planes, including Crossplane, the startup’s open-source framework for building cloud-native control planes.

With control planes like Crossplane, cloud engineers can create custom APIs unhindered by configuration drift. By utilizing the Upbound platform to host their control planes, engineers can provide centralized control, governance, and stability while giving developers the freedom of self-service.

Upbound’s platform enables businesses to consolidate cloud service offerings into intuitive, self-service portals, allowing developers and AI teams to build with agility. The startup has raised $69 million in total funding.

Wiz

Top Executive: Assaf Rappaport, CEO

Headquarters: New York City

Cloud security all-star Wiz is one of the world’s fastest growing software startups, with an estimated $500 million run rate in 2024 thanks to large customers like BMW, Fox, Morgan Stanely and Salesforce.

Wiz provides solutions that scan a customers’ cloud storage data for any security issues in order to rapidly identify and remove critical risks in cloud environments. The startup has also doubled down this year on providing native AI security capabilities with its AI-SPM (AI security posture management) offering, along with a revamped channel charge.

In May, Wiz raised an eye-popping $1 billion round led by private equity firms, bringing the startup’s valuation to $12 billion.