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PointFive Raises $16M in Seed Funding To Enable Continuous Cloud Cost Optimization

PointFive Raises $16M in Seed Funding To Enable Continuous Cloud Cost Optimization

The company, which helps customers map out saving opportunities of 15-30% of their total cloud spend, has launched its platform in early 2024

PointFive, a cloud cost optimization platform for enterprise companies specializing in uncovering deeper, typically overlooked, cloud waste, announced that it has raised $16 million in seed funding. PointFive redefines cloud cost optimization with an end-to-end platform that goes far beyond surface insights to uncover deep, infrastructure-level savings opportunities. PointFive transforms deep analysis into action, empowering engineers to exceed industry standards and propel customers beyond the competition. The round was led by Index Ventures with participation from Entree Capital, Sheva Capital, and Vesey Ventures, and angel investors, including Assaf Rappaport, CEO and Co-Founder at Wiz; Mickey Boodaei, CEO and Co-Founder at Transmit Security; Tamar Yehoshua, Former Chief Product Officer at Slack; Rakesh LoonkarAmiram Shachar, Guy Podjarni, David PolitisDean Sysman and additional notable angels. PointFive will use this funding to expand its team, invest in R&D, and support sales and marketing in the US.

PointFive’s unique DeepWaste™ detection technology delves into the intricacies of cloud spending, revealing hidden, typically overlooked inefficiencies and providing actionable pathways for remediation. Beyond deeper insights, PointFive also provides easy, action-ready next steps for remediation, with workflows designed for seamless implementation by the engineering team. The platform fosters proactive collaboration between FinOps and engineers, empowering them to continuously manage and optimize cloud costs by uncovering unseen inefficiencies, contextualizing insights for practical decision-making, implementing actionable workflows that facilitate effortless remediation and generally cultivating a sense of cost-awareness within the engineering team.

PointFive goes deeper into AWS cost architecture than competitors—into services that are not covered by any other player in the market—and AWS promotes PointFive to its customers because it understands the value of helping customers optimize their spend. PointFive’s platform not only surfaces architectural cloud cost issues and how to remediate them, but also aligns it with broader organizational goals of sustainability and growth. Competitors help customers see how much they are spending, while PointFive helps customers deeply optimize for an ongoing, more efficient infrastructure and so that customers can spend less and reroute their funds away from waste, and into innovation. That frees up funds for those customers to invest more in innovation and growing their business, creating mutually beneficial partnerships across the board.

“PointFive helped us make a major leap towards our vision of continuous cloud cost efficiency. Their innovative platform not only identifies a wide range of saving opportunities—from the straightforward to the highly complex—but also empowers our engineers with actionable insights and automation. Partnering with PointFive has enabled us to delegate cost responsibilities to the engineers, and improve our overall operational efficiency in the engineering organization.”

Dani Matzlavi, VP of Engineering – Platform Engineering and Cloud Infrastructure, Blackhawk Network

The PointFive founding team—Alon Arvatz, Gal Ben-David, and Amir Hozez—have been working together for over a decade and collectively have over 40 years of cybersecurity experience. A team of repeat entrepreneurs and 8200 graduates, they previously built IntSights, a cybersecurity startup acquired by Rapid7 for $350M in 2021. This team brought IntSights to global scale with over $30M in ARR and hundreds of enterprise customers. When they joined Rapid7, they were tasked with reducing cloud costs, and immediately recognized the difficulty of tracking that problem in the enterprise. It was there that the idea for PointFive started, as they saw an opportunity to build a new centralized platform that seamlessly transformed insight into action. Although building another cybersecurity company seemed like the more natural path, especially given how that sector is thriving in Israel, they chose to apply their passion, perspective and expertise to transforming FinOps. PointFive’s technology typically maps out saving opportunities in customer environments of between 15-30% of their total cloud spend.

“In today’s economy, where financial efficiency is critical and downsizing common, short-term optimizations fall short,” said co-founder and CEO Alon Arvatz. “We founded PointFive to equip engineers and FinOps leaders with tools that enable them to move from reactive fixes to proactive optimization, which is vital for long-term resilience and adaptability. We understand that cloud cost management is an ongoing strategy and not a one-off tactic. Our technology and innovation goes deeper than any other solution, and we not only show customers where they stand, but also help them cross the finish line.”

Also Read: Sigma Names New CFO and New General Counsel to Drive Next Phase of Growth

PointFive’s research team is also launching its S3DMap, a pioneering open-source tool designed to revolutionize Amazon S3 storage optimization. Unlike traditional bucket-oriented methods, S3DMap introduces an advanced, prefix-oriented methodology that significantly reduces S3 costs through detailed prefix-level analysis. This innovative approach allows for more precise and effective management of S3 storage and usage, focusing on individual prefixes rather than entire buckets.

Optimizing cloud costs has remained a significant and expensive struggle due to poor visibility, tracking, and minimal contextualization of engineering activities, which has made it difficult for businesses to understand and act on cloud cost implications efficiently. Most of the existing players treat cloud cost optimization as an issue of visibility rather than one of urgency, performing high level analysis of cloud spend and delivering limited and basic recommendations about cloud inefficiencies. Furthermore, challenges in calibration and accountability have hindered the adoption of a frugal engineering approach, thwarting effective cost optimization, misaligning cloud service usage with strategic business aims, and blocking the achievement of operational efficiency and meaningful cost reductions.

Also Read: CrowdStrike Collaborates with HPE to Secure End-to-End AI Innovation, Including LLMs

“PointFive is positioned at the intersection of evolving industry dynamics that are making the optimization of spending and the maximization of value derived from cloud investments a top priority,” said Juriaan Duizendstraal of Index Ventures. “These evolving industry dynamics include a higher emphasis on profitability over rapid, high-growth strategies; the evolution of the FinOps role, which is becoming more technical; and the transition to an engineering mindset, reflecting a move from centralized cloud management to empowering application developers. PointFive is playing a pivotal role in helping enterprises navigate the cost aspect of cloud services amid these shifts.”

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