Spectro Cloud raises $75M to help companies manage their Kubernetes deployments

Kubernetes, an open source system that helps manage containerized applications (software packages that run in isolated environments), has long since broken the norm. According to a recent survey, 60% of organizations have adopted Kubernetes, and Gartner estimates that more than 90% of all enterprises can run Kubernetes in production by 2026.

But Kubernetes itself remains difficult to manage. According to a survey conducted by computing services company Civo, 54% of developers believe that the complexity of Kubernetes slows down their employer.

That has led to the proliferation of vendors like Spectro Cloud, which develops software to help manage Kubernetes. Spectro Cloud provides the storage, networking and other layers, such as security, needed to orchestrate Kubernetes deployments.

Spectro Cloud was founded in 2019 by Tenry Fu, who was previously an architect at McAfee, a staff engineer at VMware, and a senior architect of Cisco’s cloud platform solutions group. Fu started Spectro Cloud with Gautam Joshi and Saad Malik, with whom he previously launched CliQr, a startup that helped customers manage applications across hybrid cloud environments. CliQr was acquired by Cisco in 2016 for $260 million.

Spectro Cloud solutions work across environments, multi-cloud, and edge environments, giving it a leg up on our competitors. The company also doesn’t focus on a specific Kubernetes “stack” or distribution, Fu said, allowing customers to bring their own flavor for their specific use cases.

“By providing one or more dynamic and flexible ‘stacks’ for Kubernetes deployments, Spectro Cloud enables enterprises to manage multiple, multi-distro clusters in an environment efficiently,” he told TechCrunch. “The platform is built to scale to handle tens of thousands of clusters.”

Spectro Cloud’s competitors range from Akuity to Loft Labs to IBM’s Kubecost. Still, the company seems to be doing well enough to keep investors’ attention. Customers include GE Healthcare, T-Mobile, Nokia, and the US Airforce and Navy.

Fu said the public sector and defense are the biggest growth areas.

“Over the past two years, we’ve built a product program specifically for the public sector, and we’ve seen great success,” he said. “There’s a big trend of people coming from the cloud in the government, and everything that moves, like planes, tanks, ships, they all become peripheral areas.”

Spectro Cloud said Tuesday it raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Goldman Sachs. Bringing the company’s total raised to $160 million and valued at $750 million, the new money will be used for product development and expanding Spectro Cloud partnerships, Fu said.

“Some of the key areas for us are edge and AI, working with hardware, storage, and cloud providers to make both virtual machines and GPUs a first-class citizen in Kubernetes,” Fu said. “This is important with all the tailwinds that exist in the industry in terms of unified management of virtual machines, container, and AI workloads, and providing new simplified information for developers.”

Spectro Cloud also plans to add about 30 people to its ~200-person workforce by the end of the year.