IBM has announced the acquisition of Kubecost, a FinOps startup that assists companies like Allianz, Audi, Rakuten, and GitLab in optimizing and monitoring their Kubernetes clusters with a focus on cost efficiency.
This acquisition follows IBM’s $4.3 billion purchase of Apptio in 2023, another key player in the FinOps space. In recent years, IBM has also acquired cloud management companies such as Turbonomic and application performance management firm Instana. The acquisition of Kubecost further strengthens IBM’s capabilities in IT and FinOps, responding to the growing demand for better management of increasingly complex cloud and on-premises infrastructures.
Kubecost’s co-founder and CEO, Webb Brown, expressed enthusiasm about the acquisition, stating, “Since our launch in 2019, our mission has been to optimize global infrastructure. Starting with Kubernetes cost monitoring, we’ve become the most widely adopted solution in the cloud-native ecosystem. This merger enables us to deliver broader, end-to-end cost management solutions to teams worldwide.”
Kubecost is also the organization behind OpenCost, an open-source project at the heart of its commercial offering. OpenCost, launched in 2022, is part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s sandbox projects, further enhancing Kubecost’s influence in the cloud-native community.
IBM plans to integrate Kubecost into its FinOps Suite, which already includes Cloudability and Turbonomic. There is speculation that Kubecost and OpenCost could also be integrated more deeply into IBM’s OpenShift enterprise platform.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Kubecost’s last funding round was a $25 million Series A in 2022, led by Coatue Management, following a $5.5 million seed round led by First Round Capital in 2021.
