Ternary, a platform dedicated to helping businesses effectively manage their cloud spending across multiple public cloud providers, has announced a successful Series A funding round that raised $12 million. This round was led by Jump Capital and saw participation from other notable investors, including Fin Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Gaingels.
Co-founder and CEO Sasha Kipervarg has outlined that the newly secured funds, which bring Ternary’s total capital to approximately $20 million, will be allocated towards expanding the platform’s market presence, scaling its revenue team, and making ongoing investments in product development.
Kipervarg emphasized the pressing issue of uncontrolled cloud spending in the industry, noting that while most computational work remains within data centers, a gradual shift towards cloud infrastructure is inevitable. He stressed the need for tools to manage the diverse and dynamic cloud services employed in building cloud infrastructure.
Ternary’s origins trace back to the co-founders’ experience on a large-scale cloud data migration project for LiveRamp, a software-as-a-service data connectivity and orchestration platform. They encountered a significant overspending issue of $300 million, which they subsequently addressed over several years. This experience motivated them to develop a solution to streamline the migration process, essentially creating “the tool we wished we had during migration.”
Ternary operates in the FinOps sector, which has evolved from a niche field into a substantial industry as organizations seek effective tools to monitor and reduce cloud costs. A 2023 Wakefield Research report revealed that nearly 30% of developers, engineers, and executives are prioritizing FinOps investments, with 74% considering FinOps as vital as other established IT disciplines like DevOps and SecOps.
Ternary faces competition from various vendors in the FinOps market, including Exostellar, CloudZero, Cast AI, ProsperOps, Finout, Vantage, and Zesty. The FinOps sector is projected to be valued at $2.75 billion by 2023.
What sets Ternary apart, according to Kipervarg, are a few key differentiators. Ternary releases major features at an agile pace, in contrast to slower incumbents. It is built on native Google Cloud Platform serverless services and can process vast amounts of cloud spending, offering infinite scalability. Half of the 25-member team comprises early leaders from prominent cloud management companies, such as Cloudability, Cloudhealth, and Cloudchkr, providing deep industry expertise.
Ternary, like other FinOps solutions, dissects a company’s primary cloud expenses, providing optimization suggestions and forecasting expenditure. The platform integrates real-time billing data from major cloud providers, such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Azure. It offers insights into costs associated with different accounts, services, software vendors, and cloud service providers. Ternary also recommends strategies for cost reduction using adaptable algorithms, allowing it to notify customers when cloud costs approach specific thresholds or experience unexpected spikes.
Kipervarg stressed the importance of having FinOps guardrails to enable responsible and successful cloud operations, emphasizing Ternary’s role in shedding light on a currently unmonitored aspect of a company.
Ternary, now valued in the “two figures” following the latest funding round, serves nearly 250 customers and plans to expand its workforce from 25 employees to 40 within the next year.
Kipervarg noted that the overall slowdown in the tech sector has not paused cloud migrations, and Ternary is well-positioned with substantial runway for future growth.
