Guidewheel, Spectro Cloud and Wiz are among the list-makers.

An artificial intelligence-powered platform vendor for measuring equipment performance. A provider of a Kubernetes management platform for scaling across various environments. And a cloud security tools juggernaut.

Guidewheel, Spectro Cloud and Wiz are among the startups to make CRN’s 10 Cloud Startups To Watch In 2025.

For this list, CRN considered companies founded in 2018 or later and ones with impressive funding rounds in the later part of 2024 that should help carry them through an ever-competitive landscape in 2025. CRN also gave extra weight to startups with channel partner programs.

[RELATED: The 10 Hottest Cybersecurity Startups Of 2024]

2025 Cloud Startups

Gartner said in a November report that 90 percent of organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud approach through 2027. The research firm predicts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will total $723.4 billion in 2025. In 2024, the spending was projected to be $595.7 billion.

Data management and synchronization to unlock new use cases in generative artificial intelligence are part of the fuel for growing cloud demand, according to Gartner.

CRN has been compiling lists of some of the hottest startup companies for 2024, including big data startups, semiconductor startups plus security startups.

Here are some of the most promising cloud startups to watch in 2025.

Aviz Networks

CEO: Vishal Shukla

Founded in 2019, Aviz Networks has been hard at work innovating on its brand of open networking software for cloud-scale infrastructure. The company specializes in building open, cloud, AI-first networks that prioritize choice, control and cost savings.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company earlier this year introduced its One Data Lake, launched a generative AI conversational Network Copilot and upgraded its packet broker offerings for applications and 5G General Packet Radio Service Tunneling Protocol use cases.

It offers an AI Network Copilot for capacity planning, business intelligence analytics, compliance and other use cases with switches and clouds.

Aviz, which counts Cisco Investments among its backers, also has a partner program for reseller and distributor partners.

In November, Aviz amassed a war chest for 2025 with a $17 million Series A funding round. The vendor will use the money for hiring and product development.

Shukla co-founded Aviz in 2022, according to his LinkedIn account. His resume includes about two years with MobileIron and Ivanti, leaving with the title of senior director of cloud engineering. Ivanti bought MobileIron in 2020.

Shukla also worked at Nvidia for about three years, leaving in 2019 as director of product management and technical sales for the Mellanox switching portfolio.

Cyera

CEO: Yotam Segev

Cyera provides an agentless data security platform that works across environments including cloud, Software as a Service and on-premises, offering data security posture management and data loss prevention.

The combination of the capabilities provides unified visibility into data and access risks, according to the company. The startup expanded beyond its core focus on data security posture management to add data loss prevention capabilities with the $162 million acquisition of Trail Security in October. Key partners of Cyera include GuidePoint Security, World Wide Technology and Trace3.

In November, New York-based Cyera announced raising a $300 million Series D round of funding, which followed a previous fundraise of the same amount in April. The latest round has more than doubled the company’s valuation to $3 billion.

Segev co-founded Cyera in 2021, according to his LinkedIn account. Segev previously built and ran the cloud security division for the Israeli Defense Force’s Unit 8200 and served as a senior class commander in the IDF’s Talpiot Leadership Academy.

Cyera is a member of CRN’s 2024 Partner Program Guide.

DevRev

CEO: Dheeraj Pandey

Taking on Zendesk, Atlassian Jira, Salesforce Service Cloud and other popular products, DevRev positions its cloud-based, AI-native platform as a way to unify customer support and product development.

In August, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor revealed that it landed a $100.8 million Series A round of funding, bringing DevRev’s valuation to $1.15 billion. The vendor has more than 1,000 customers.

DevRev users can generate connected knowledge graphs to power AI agents. The platform allows for integrated road-mapping, issue tracking and user insights. DevRev has a partner program for resellers, implementers and other business models.

Pandey co-founded DevRev in 2020, according to his LinkedIn account. He previously co-founded software-defined computing platform Nutanix in 2009 and led it as CEO.

Eon

CEO: Ofir Ehrlich

Eon came out of stealth this year with its Cloud Backup Platform, which businesses can use to back up data based on their business policies and compliance requirements.

This lets the New York-based vendor automatically assign the appropriate backup policy and retention period, ensuring data is backed up for the right amount of time. The technology contextually understands, classifies and indexes cloud resources and applications.

In November, Eon raised a $70 million Series C round of funding, reaching a $1.4 billion valuation. Investors included Bond, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Ehrlich co-founded Eon in 2024, according to his LinkedIn account. He also co-founded CloudEndure in 2012 and served as vice president of research and development until the company was sold to Amazon Web Services in 2019.

GMI Cloud

CEO: Alex Yeh

GMI, short for General Machine Intelligence, offers a cloud-based graphics processing unit platform for users to train, fine-tune and inference AI models, with scalable GPU containers and preconfigured machine learning frameworks.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor’s on-demand GPUs start at $4.39 per GPU-hour, and its private cloud is priced at at least $2.50 per GPU-hour.

In October, GMI Cloud announced that it raised $15 million in equity funding and $67 million in debt financing in a Series A round, with the money going toward a new data center in Colorado.

GMI Cloud has a partner program for systems integrators, consultancies and other business models, according to the vendor.

Yeh founded GMI Cloud in 2021, according to his LinkedIn account.

Guidewheel

CEO: Lauren Dunford

FactoryOps is the name Guidewheel gives its artificial intelligence-powered platform for measuring equipment performance and forecasting production volumes and delivery dates.

Users of the San Francisco-based startup’s wares clip noninvasive sensors to machine power supplies, send data to the cloud in real time and then make data-driven decisions around issues with the machines. Customers include Coca-Cola, Igloo and Kimberly Clark.

In August, Guidewheel revealed that it raised $31 million in a Series B round of funding. BlackRock and Temasek’s Decarbonization Partners fund led the round, with participation by Rethink Impact, GSBackers, Greycroft and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

After the funding round, Guidewheel pushed out product updates including an improved issues scoreboard and better waste tracking, according to the vendor.

Dunford co-founded the company in 2018, according to her LinkedIn account. Her resume includes about five years with Revolution Foods, leaving the company in 2016 with the title of chief of staff.

ScaleOps

CEO: Yodar Shafrir

In November, ScaleOps revealed a $58 million Series B round of funding that could make the startup a force to be reckoned with in the cloud resource management market.

The New York-based company also pushed forward an AI-powered real-time predictive scaling capability along with intelligent pod placement. The capabilities can deliver up to 50 percent in additional cloud cost savings while improving application performance, according to ScaleOps.

ScaleOps promises users a Kubernetes resource optimization platform to enhance cluster reliability, automate resource requests per pod and diagnose cluster-level and workload-level issues, among other use cases.

Shafrir co-founded ScaleOps in 2022, according to his LinkedIn account. His resume includes about two years with Run:ai, leaving the company in 2021 as software team lead for AI orchestration.

Spectro Cloud

CEO: Tenry Fu

Spectro Cloud’s Palette Kubernetes management platform supports container workloads and virtual machines at scale across on-premises hardware, multi-cloud environments and the edge.

The San Jose, Calif.-based vendor closed a hefty war chest of $75 million in November to help it push product innovation in edge computing and scale new go-to-market partnerships.

After the Series C round announcement, Spectro went on to reveal an edge in a box offering with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and an extension for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service Hybrid Nodes, positioning the company for more innovative developments in 2025.

Fu co-founded the company in 2019, according to his LinkedIn account. Fu previously co-founded CliQr in 2010 and served as itsC TO before Cisco Systems acquired the company in 2016. He left Cisco with the title of senior director and chief architect for the Cloud Platform Solutions Group.

Spectro has about 50 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.

VirtualZ Computing

CEO: Jeanne Glass

Appearing on last year’s list as well, VirtualZ continued to attract attention throughout 2024, even landing another $2.1 million in a new round of funding in August to help take its data access software to another level.

The Minneapolis-based vendor positions its suite of products as capable of integrating mainframe, cloud and distributed environments for AI, analytics and other use cases.

The company’s Lozen software avoids replicating or lifting and shifting data from mainframes, and Zaac allows mainframe applications to read and write data from other platforms in real time. PropelZ, the other flagship offering by VirtualZ, creates mainframe data copies for experimentation and analysis in hybrid cloud environments.

VirtualZ has integrations with the Amazon Web Services, Snowflake and IBM, according to the vendor.

VirtualZ has a partner program for resellers and other business models. Partners include CRN 2024 Solution Provider 500 members Kyndryl and Carahsoft.

Glass founded VirtualZ in 2018, according to her LinkedIn account. Her resume includes about six years with Tripwire, leaving the company with the title of director of sales.

Wiz

CEO: Assaf Rappaport

Cloud security vendor Wiz, a startup to watch on last year’s list, 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.

The New York-based vendor provides products that scan a customer’s cloud storage data for any security issues 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 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. Late in 2024, Wiz acquired channel-focused cloud security platform provider Dazz, boosting Wiz’s remediation and data correlation capabilities.

Rappaport co-founded Wiz in 2020, according to his LinkedIn account. He also co-founded Adallom in 2012 and led the security SaaS company as its CEO until its 2015 saleto Microsoft. Rappaport left Microsoft in 2020 as general manager of Israel research and development.

Wiz has about 190 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.