Community, Cocktails, and $13.6M: The Era of Alt Cloud is Here.
Last night at 120 Broadway, the vibe was explicitly "low to zero bullshit."
I was lucky to join the final Alt Cloud meetup of the year, hosted by the Datum team. Amidst the "speakeasy" atmosphere and non-AI craft cocktails, I was struck by a specific ritual Zach Smith and Jacob Smith introduced: Mutual Aid.
Attendees filled out notecards not with pitches, but with requests for help, which the group then solved together. That spirit of cooperation is exactly why I’m so bullish on what Zach and Jacob are building, and why I am thrilled to celebrate their announcement yesterday:
🚀 Datum has raised $13.6M to unlock "internet superpowers" for every builder.
The event last night proved why this is necessary. We heard from builders pushing the boundaries of infrastructure:
Shayne Stubbs (Attimis) on the necessity of local access to data anywhere.
Jake Moshenko (AuthZed) gave a fascinating talk on the "deadly trifecta" of agent authorization—reminding us that AI agents will stress-test our organizations in ways human users never did.
The amazing Drew Raines (Datum) demoed what it looks like to deploy global backbones without leaving your IDE.
The Mountain Branch Consulting View: The next 1,000 clouds won’t look like the last 10. We are moving away from generalist behemoths toward specialized infrastructure—GPU clouds, AI clouds, Data clouds.
But innovation at the lowest layers (DNS, routing, peering) has historically required crash carts and cage nuts. Datum changes that game. They are handing the keys to the internet’s engine room to developers, minus the friction.
Huge congratulations to my friends Zachary Smith and Jacob Smith, and the partners at Amplify, CRV, Encoded, ex/ante, Step Function, and Vine.
The Datum team is now on the pitch!
#AltCloud #Infrastructure #VentureCapital #Datum #TechNews
