Lately, cloud computing has seen rapid adoption across various industries, offering numerous benefits to businesses.
However, along with these comes a significant challenge – unpredictable and escalating cloud billing.
Despite the widespread use of cloud services, a substantial portion of cloud investments, estimated at 32 per cent or $512B annually, is wasted.
This often arises from issues like idle resources, oversized instances, zombie infrastructure, and operational inefficiencies.
Meet Yasu Cloud
Enter Yasu Cloud, a new player on the block aiming to fundamentally change how organisations interact with their cloud infrastructure.
The Amsterdam-based company was founded by Vikram Das (CEO) and John in ‘t Hout (CTO), experts with deep cloud and AI experience, including 30+ years across AWS, and Google Cloud, and building AI agentic architectures from the ground up.
The company has received pre-seed investment from Antler.
As per the company’s claims, its pilot customers are already seeing potential savings of up to 40 per cent, identified in just minutes, which strengthens their ROI case.
In this edition of the “New Kid on the Block” series, we had a chance to interview the co-founder and CEO Vikram Das to learn more about the idea behind founding Yasu Cloud, unpredictable cloud cost, how it helps businesses, and much more.
The origin of Yasu Cloud
“Yasu was born from our firsthand experiences where we saw that while customers loved what cloud had to offer, they were deeply frustrated by unpredictable and escalating cloud billing,” says Vikram Das.
According to the founding duo, the main problem is that current solutions only tackle issues after they arise.
Cloud teams often spend a lot of time trying to find idle resources, incorrectly sized instances, and outdated infrastructure instead of concentrating on innovation and development, according to the CEO.
“We created Yasu to be the AI cloud engineer that cuts waste before it happens. Rather than providing yet another dashboard showing historical problems, we built an Agentic AI system that works proactively by integrating directly into the development workflow,” adds Das.
The company’s solution identifies cost implications during the design phase and throughout deployment pipelines, making it ten times cheaper to address issues before deployment rather than after, when they can impact profits.
“In just five minutes, Yasu identifies savings that would typically take weeks to uncover manually, giving engineering teams back their time to focus on what matters —building great products,” adds Das.
Yasu Cloud Simplified
At its core, Yasu acts as an AI cloud engineer who works 24/7 to eliminate cloud waste.
“With just five minutes of setup, our AI identifies immediate savings opportunities while continuously optimising your cloud environment without manual intervention,” explains Das.
The platform does this by integrating directly into the development workflow to identify and address costly configurations before they go live.
Additionally, the company’s AI agents monitor for cost overruns, security misconfigurations, and compliance violations, saving engineers roughly half the time they would typically spend on cloud operations.
“Most companies are like homeowners who only discover they’ve left all the lights on when the electricity bill arrives. Yasu is like having a smart assistant that turns off unnecessary lights automatically and reminds you before you leave a room. Not only that, but we can warn you before your light bulb burns out and when you could replace the bulb with a cheaper one,” Das cites an example.
What makes Yasu unique?
Yasu’s approach to cloud cost management differs significantly from traditional tools in several ways.
According to the founding duo, current solutions have two main gaps that Yasu addresses: the prevention gap and the intelligence gap.
The prevention gap arises because traditional tools focus on costs after they are incurred, making it ten times more expensive to fix issues in production than to address them during development, often leading to a 45-day delay in implementation.
The intelligence gap exists as many solutions provide flashy dashboards but lack meaningful insights that connect technical metrics with business impact.
“The industry doesn’t need better calculators—it needs a brain that understands both the technology and the business context,” says John in ‘t Hout.
According to the company, its platform stands apart in three key ways.
“We shift cost intelligence left in the development process,” Das explains. “That means catching issues during design—when they’re 10x cheaper to fix,” he explains.
Unlike traditional tools that rely on manual analysis or post-deployment audits, Yasu’s AI agents operate autonomously. They identify optimisation opportunities, implement changes, and continue learning from the environment.
“Our AI agents implement optimisations automatically, continuously monitor results, and adapt their approach based on your environment,” he continues.
Lastly, the platform embeds directly into familiar tools like Slack, GitHub, and others.
“We meet your teams where they work. Instead of another dashboard, Yasu integrates directly into Slack, GitHub, and your existing toolchain,” he adds.
Who benefits the most?
Yasu Cloud claims that companies with a monthly cloud spend exceeding €30,000 typically see the greatest value.
Currently, the company serves two key segments:
- Growth-focused companies that have exhausted cloud credits and suddenly face runway-consuming bills
- Enterprises wanting to scale without burdening their engineering teams
“Our most successful customers recognize that optimization isn’t just about saving money—it’s about freeing engineers from the cognitive load of infrastructure management to focus on innovation,” says Das.
The AI-driven future of cloud cost management
The founding duo believes that the future of cloud cost management is moving towards fully autonomous AI cloud engineers working alongside human teams.
“In the immediate future, we’re seeing a shift from reactive to proactive approaches—moving from analysing past spending to preventing waste during development,” he adds.
In the next two years, AI agents will take over complex optimisations across multi-cloud environments, continuously monitoring and adjusting without human help.
Furthermore, the most significant advancement will be in contextual understanding, where AI systems understand the business context behind cloud decisions, balancing performance with cost efficiency.
“The future of cloud management isn’t better dashboards—it’s intelligent agents that handle the routine optimisation automatically, freeing humans to focus on strategic decisions that require business judgment,” he adds.
What’s Next?
According to the company’s CEO, Yasu is expanding in three key directions.
They are expanding their support to more cloud providers and infrastructure services beyond AWS and Google Cloud, including Azure and Snowflake.
They are also enhancing their platform to address security and compliance in cloud environments, aiming to become a comprehensive cloud governance solution.
Lastly, the company is focused on reducing the cognitive load on engineering teams by automating the entire infrastructure-as-code lifecycle.
“Our focus is on building AI cloud engineers that work alongside human teams—handling the repetitive aspects of cloud management while providing insights that help organisations make better strategic decisions. Our goal is simple: let engineers focus on building great applications while Yasu handles the infrastructure complexity,” he concludes.
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