A startup named FluidCloud has officially launched today, aiming to tackle the persistent challenge of cloud infrastructure lock-in. The company claims to possess the tools and technologies capable of reverse-engineering any computational environment, enabling workloads to seamlessly transfer between different cloud platforms.
Its commitment is evident through an $8.1 million seed funding round, exclusively led by investor Unusual Ventures.
Sharad Kumar, FluidCloud's co-founder and CEO, explained to SiliconANGLE that businesses have long struggled to gain flexibility by reducing reliance on single cloud providers. Despite their best efforts, many enterprises still find themselves trapped in vendor-specific ecosystems.
Traditional cloud migration has always been slow, costly, and impractical due to the inherent complexity of modern cloud architectures and high transition costs. Even successful migrations risk getting locked into another cloud platform's ecosystem.
This creates critical business risks when key applications are bound to a single supplier, forcing companies to accept that vendor's pricing model. In case of major cloud provider outages, customers would have no alternative but to remain captive.
FluidCloud's solution offers a one-click platform leveraging AI agents to rapidly clone cloud infrastructure environments, enabling complete migrations to alternative cloud platforms. According to Kumar, the platform reverse-engineers client environments into "standard infrastructure definitions" that can be instantly remapped across any cloud architecture within seconds.
Built on AI and Infrastructure as Code principles, the platform transforms cloud infrastructure design into strategic, portable assets deployable anywhere. Traditional cloud migrations require painstaking manual processes - Kumar likens it to "rebuilding an entire city" while maintaining continuous operations.
To automate this complex process, FluidCloud developed intelligent cloud AI agents trained to understand and replicate entire cloud infrastructure environments. These agents utilize a meticulously crafted programmatic cloud API mapping engine that spans every layer of computation, networking, storage, IAM, and security policies across multiple providers.
The AI agents are capable of handling massive workloads, including global-scale applications like Uber or Trello typically running hundreds of microservices on platforms like AWS. Through its AI agents, FluidCloud identifies each service configuration and replicates it exactly on target cloud platforms.
"We can clone entire architectures onto Google Cloud using identical configurations, replicating every VPC, load balancer, security rule, database endpoint, and storage volume," Kumar emphasized.
Upon completion, FluidCloud provides DevOps teams with custom CI/CD pipelines tailored to the new cloud provider. With minimal code adjustments, AWS-built applications can operate seamlessly on Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure, giving clients options for multi-cloud adoption or retiring legacy infrastructure.
"Months-long reengineering processes have been transformed into one-click cloning operations, enabling enterprises to transition to multi-cloud environments in days rather than quarters," Kumar stated.
By simplifying migration complexities, FluidCloud positions enterprises to negotiate cloud infrastructure agreements and cost terms more advantageously. This empowers companies to avoid vendor lock-in, compelling providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to offer more competitive terms.
"We make cloud providers compete for your business," Kumar asserted. "When cloud providers know you can freely move workloads, they're more likely to offer aggressive pricing, customized SLAs, and other incentives."
While Kumar remained coy about specific customer details, FluidCloud has already attracted notable advocates like cloud infrastructure startup Vultr Inc., which challenges AWS by providing affordable high-performance computing alternatives.
Vultr's developer advocate Mirdul Swarup called FluidCloud's technology a "game-changer" for customers prioritizing cloud freedom. "It enables unparalleled flexibility for innovation on preferred platforms," he added.
