Momento launches out of stealth with a serverless cache • TechCrunch

After working at NASA as a rover roboticist, Khawaja Shams underwent one thing of a profession pivot, becoming a member of AWS to staff up with engineer Daniela Miao on DynamoDB, a totally managed NoSQL database service. Not content material to cease there, Shams and Miao left AWS to co-found Momento, a Seattle-based startup that’s as we speak rising from stealth with a “serverless cache” optimized for cloud computing.

What’s a serverless cache, you ask? Properly, Shams describes it as an elastic, “extremely accessible” cache that delivers generally used information to apps and databases sooner. He claims that Momento’s platform lets builders add a cache to their cloud stack with round 5 traces of code, accelerating databases that run in public clouds reminiscent of Amazon Net Companies or Google Cloud.

“Legacy caching suppliers supply a special mannequin that requires prospects to provision and pay for his or her peak capability. These inelastic providers are extremely inefficient, costly, require a number of work to get proper, and easily don’t scale,” Shams advised TechCrunch in an electronic mail interview. “Momento permits prospects to provision a safe cache, able to dealing with thousands and thousands of transactions per second, with a single API name.”

Shams makes the case that legacy caching providers are difficult and inefficient, forcing engineering groups to waste time tinkering round with too many configurations. Furthermore, he says, as a result of they don’t robotically scale, they require engineers to provision for peak utilization — resulting in wasteful spending.

Against this, Momento handles load spikes whereas abstracting away configuration. The platform robotically optimizes, scales and manages caches, additionally securing caches with end-to-end encryption and audit log assist.

“Cloud computing made it simpler than ever for purchasers to quickly provision assets. Sadly, throughout the growth-focused phases within the latest years, prospects have ended up massively over-provisioning capability and are combating massive payments from their cloud suppliers,” Shams mentioned. “Momento helps prospects optimize one of many prime line objects on their cloud payments.”

To Shams’ level, cloud prices for some enterprises skyrocketed throughout the pandemic as digital transformation efforts accelerated. A 2022 survey from Anodot, an analytics platform, reveals that just about half of companies (49%) are discovering it troublesome to get their cloud prices beneath management. In keeping with a separate ballot by Flexera, greater than 50% of firms now spend over $2.4 million on the general public cloud every year.

Momento claims to have closed “a number of six-figure offers” with prospects together with CBS, NTT Docomo and good dwelling firm Wyze Labs. The startup bought an early vote of confidence from VCs together with Bain Capital Ventures, which led Momento’s $15 million seed funding spherical that closed this week. The Basic Partnership participated alongside Flickr CEO Don MacAskill, former Mozilla CEO John Lilly and different angels. 

Shams says that the funding can be used to broaden 25-employee Momento’s engineering staff, construct a “full-cycle” go-to-market staff, develop the Momento platform and add assist for extra public clouds.

“As a result of latest financial downturn, organizations are actively in search of price financial savings and effectivity. Caching tends to be among the many prime line objects on their cloud payments, and Momento’s capability to save lots of on their caching is interesting,” Shams mentioned.