SPOT

Spot (originally named Spotinst) is a cloud cost optimization software company founded in 2015 in Tel Aviv by Amiram Shachar. The company's software applies machine learning and automation to continuously optimize cloud pricing and resource provisioning, addressing wasted budget and overprovisioning that arise when public cloud pricing models do not match an organization's usage patterns. The original concept came from Shachar's final computer science project on cloud optimization, drawing on his experience running data center and cloud infrastructure in the Israeli military and later as a director of DevOps.

By early 2021 more than 1,500 organizations were using the service. NetApp acquired the company for $450 million, completing the deal in June 2020; following the acquisition Spot's annual revenues grew to more than $100 million. Operating inside NetApp, Spot under Shachar led further cloud acquisitions including CloudCheckr and Instaclustr, which were folded into the Spot product portfolio. Shachar and colleagues Liran Polak, Lavi Ferdman and Tal Zur left NetApp roughly two years after the sale to found the cybersecurity company Upwind.

Founding story

Amiram Shachar served six years in the IDF as an officer in the Mamram unit, where he was responsible for the army's data center infrastructure, installing and virtualizing servers and modernizing applications. After the military he worked as a director of DevOps while studying for a BSc in computer science at the College of Management, and in his final semester completed a project on cloud optimization. Applying the cost-saving ideas he had used for energy and server space in military data centers to the public cloud became the genesis of the company, which he founded in 2015 in Tel Aviv.

Business model

Software service sold to organizations that run workloads in public clouds, reducing their cloud spend through more efficient pricing and provisioning models.

Sale of cloud optimization software to enterprise and other organizational customers; annual revenues exceeded $100 million after the NetApp acquisition.

Traction

More than 1,500 organizations using the service as of February 2021; annual revenues above $100 million after the NetApp acquisition, with founders forecasting growth toward roughly $500 million in annual sales in subsequent years.

Latest developments

Following the $450 million sale to NetApp, the founding team completed their tenure at the company about two years later and founded the cybersecurity startup Upwind, which raised $28 million in seed funding while in stealth (reported September 2022).