The artificial intelligence boom has prompted countless entrepreneurs to jump into the data center business. However, launching a data center is far from straightforward. Even after securing GPUs, network switches, and storage, operators must still configure everything, ensure it runs smoothly, and accommodate diverse customer requirements. Preparing a data center to deliver cloud-computing services for AI inference and training can take months. The longer it takes to go live, the more costly it becomes to keep those expensive GPUs sitting idle.

Network automation startup Netris claims it can eliminate this challenge for neoclouds. The company offers software that operates on network switches, along with a platform that connects to those switches. This setup helps neocloud operators cut the time to market by automating setup, configuration, and ongoing operations. The platform also provides network abstraction, allowing hardware configurations to be adjusted as needed, and isolates servers and resources at the hardware layer to support multi-tenancy—serving multiple customers simultaneously.

If this sounds like a solution to an obvious problem, you're not mistaken. Until recently, data centers were largely dominated by large infrastructure operators like Equinix, NTT, Digital Realty, Oracle, Microsoft, AWS, and Google. These companies solved network setup, configuration, and multi-tenancy by hiring teams of engineers or building their own automation. Smaller neocloud businesses rarely have such resources. "As a GPU cluster operator, you need to make configuration changes to every link, every day," noted a company representative. "For AI, software isn't sufficient because the traffic volume is so high—everything must be hardware accelerated. So you need something like SDN, but fully hardware accelerated. That's what we do, and it's what we've been doing for eight years."

Saroyan stated that Netris' platform is vendor-agnostic, compatible with networking equipment and standards used in data centers, supporting both Nvidia and AMD servers. The startup's promise has attracted many believers, including Nvidia. Two years ago, the chipmaking giant was so impressed by a demo of Netris' technology that it recommended the company to several customers. Today, Netris is operational at over 35 GPU clusters worldwide (totaling about a million GPUs), serving clients like Lightning AI, Foxconn, Visionbay, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tensorwave, Telus, and others. Notably, no AI is involved here. Saroyan explained that the company relies solely on algorithms developed earlier for running and configuring automation and operations. "We started way before AI. We understood the challenge early on and began developing this algorithm early. AI isn't deterministic—sometimes it likes to do things on its own. It's good for creative work, but for changing thousands of switch configurations, you don't need creativity. You need persistence and repeatability."

a16z partner Guido Appenzeller is joining the company's board. Looking ahead, Netris plans to use the funding to hire more engineers and sales staff, expand support for additional hardware vendors, and enhance its algorithm with more functionality.