Ninety days.
That’s how long it took us to stand up a global network for Datum this past summer. IP space, Anycast, DNS, routing policies, traffic engineering, observability—all of it. In just a few months, we had a purpose-built infrastructure running across providers like NetActuate and Vultr, delivering the kind of control and visibility usually reserved for well-established giants.
Of course, this has literally been my job for 25 years, so I really should know what I’m doing! Plus, I had the help of Tom Daly (one of the foremost network builders in the world), the daily support of Josh Reese and Scot Wells (StackPath, SoftLayer alums) and friends in all the right places on speed dial. Or at least Slack connect and WhatsApp.
To put it another way: I had all the advantages, knew exactly what to do, was highly motivated, and still it took me months. All so that we could show up and participate on the internet at a meaningful level.
In most every way, deploying and managing scaled infrastructure is a solved problem. Between the cloud native revolution, the maturation of DevOps, and the long march of open source, it’s pretty standard practice to do what Supabase says on their website: build in a weekend, scale to millions.
It may not be a journey without trials and tribulations, but it is certainly more doable than ever — thanks in large part to an exploding class of alt clouds like Supabase plus also Modal, AuthZed, Metronome, Daytona, Turso, Vercel, and so many others.
Unfortunately, as my recent “around the internet in 90 days” adventure proved, it’s a radically different journey to innovate on the foundations of the internet.
Why this, and why now?
Today we announced $13.6M in seed funding from a truly amazing group of investors, including Sunil at Amplify, Reid at CRV, Alex at Encoded, Zoe at ex/ante, Will at Step Function and the entire team Vine.
Here was our pitch:
We want to help 1k new clouds thrive in the AI era.
But with workload and data being distributed everywhere, regulation becoming more complex (the “splinternet” is real), and security concerns skyrocketing, an entire generation of cloud and AI-native builders is working with at least one hand tied behind their backs.
What if we could give them access to the same capabilities that the big guys use today (e.g. authoritative DNS, distributed edge proxies, global backbones, deterministic routing, cloud on-ramps, and private connections), but in the tools they already use, like Cursor and Kubernetes?
What if we could unlock internet superpowers for every builder?
Datum is working to crack open this world and invite the next generation to get their hands dirty — no network team or months-long build required. Frankly, we need their help to build and run the next chapter of the internet — one where thousands of clouds, millions of builders, and billions of agents can interact securely.
Just like the peering forums and NANOG meetings of yesterday, we’re anxious to show up, collaborate, and invest in this community.
If you’re interested in seeing how you can be involved (or to give us feedback) please reach out.