RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – The RTP-headquartered software as a service (SaaS) company PerfectScale announced a seed funding raise of $7.1 million today, taking the firm’s total funding to $10M since its founding in March 2022.

According to Co-Founder and CEO Amir Banet, PerfectScale’s secret sauce is providing companies with recommendations that say how, exactly, they can optimize their Kubernetes environment. (Kubernetes, also called “K8,” is an open-source platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications – or applications run in isolated packages of code, according to Google Cloud.)

“We have a SaaS AI-driven solution that autonomously and continuously optimizes each layer of the Kubernetes stack, which ensures that you are able to provide the desired quality of service in the lowest possible cost,” said Banet in an exclusive interview with WRAL TechWire.

Banet explained there are many existing solutions and open-source tools out there to help companies collect and visualize their Kubernetes data metrics—but PerfectScale is unique because the platform makes AI-powered recommendations about how to improve, either reducing cost or increasing resiliency.

“Other competitors can also put the spotlight of where you have waste, but we are the only one that is able to accurately tell you what to do in order to address the waste,” said Banet. “And we have the spotlight on resiliency, which is kind of unique for us, and all of that can be done autonomously, so, also, the automation here plays a more mature approach to the entire lifecycle.”

Screenshot of the PerfectScale platform, where users can review and implement recommendations to lower cost, improve resiliency, and/or lower CO2 emissions; these decisions can also be automated | Graphic provided by PerfectScale

With this $7.1M raise, the company plans to invest in its currently deployed platform and build out its go-to-market framework.

Raleigh-headquartered Red Hat is big in the Kubernetes space, but Banet says that PerfectScale and Red Hat aren’t working on anything together at the moment.

“Perfect Scale is a partner in the Red Hat OpenShift marketplace, but they are not our user yet,” said Banet. “I hope this will change soon.”

$7.1M round made room for Triangle Tweener

The $7.1 million round was led by Blumberg Capital with participation from Upwest, Prelude Ventures, K2 Access Fund, Inner Loop Capital, Firestreak Ventures, and Triangle Tweener Fund, according to the press release.

Scot Wingo, founder and fund manager of Triangle Tweener Fund, told TechWire that they were “aggressive” about participating in PerfectScale’s round after adding the company to the Triangle Tweener List.

“Part of our thesis of the Tweener Fund is the Tweener List would give us an edge in finding companies,” said Wingo. “This is a perfect case study. In doing research for the 2023 list, we saw PerfectScale come out of nowhere.”

Wingo said he reached out to Banet directly to learn more about the company after seeing them on LinkedIn.

“When we found out they were raising a round we were quite aggressive and made it clear we wanted to participate,” said Wingo.

Banet shared with TechWire that the reason the seed round isn’t an even $7M is because they created space for the Triangle Tweener Fund to join.

“We were already overbooked, and they asked nicely to be participating after the round was closed,” said Banet. “And we allowed them because, again, we want to be a more integrated part of the Triangle community, and Scott is a great resource to have. So it was a no-brainer to extend the round to have them aboard.”

PerfectScale CEO Amir Banet

Wingo also said that companies in the “DevOps” category, like PerfectScale, are personally important to him.

“That segment is near and dear to me as my first company was in this segment and we have a long history of great DevOps companies,” said Wingo.

Other DevOps companies in the Tweener Fund portfolio include AllStacks, Arpio and Stashpad.

PerfectScale Gets Quick Attention

Being a relatively new company hasn’t held PerfectScale back; the AI-powered firm was named a “Cool Vendor” for 2023 by Gartner. Banet says the award is “interesting,” given the company was just founded last year.

“The reason why it is so interesting is because, again, the stage we are, as a company, and still, to be able to reach to these achievements,” said Banet. “And this is because our product is really disruptive and unique in our space. And the problem that we’re addressing is quite a big one.”

Learn more about PerfectScale at perfectscale.io.