IBM acquires Kubernetes cost optimization startup Kubecost

IBM on Tuesday announced that it has acquired Kubecost, a FinOps startup that helps teams at companies like Allianz, Audi, Rakuten, and GitLab monitor and optimize their Kubernetes clusters with a focus on efficiency and, ultimately, cost.

Tuesday’s announcement follows IBM’s $4.3 billion acquisition of Apptio in 2023, another company in the FinOps space. In previous years, we also saw IBM acquire companies like cloud app and network management firm Turbonomic and application performance management startup Instana. Now with the acquisition of KubeCost, IBM continues this effort to bolster its IT and FinOps capabilities as enterprises increasingly look to better manage their increasingly complex cloud and on-prem infrastructure.

“Since launching in 2019, our mission has been to optimize the world’s infrastructure,” Kubecost co-founder and CEO Webb Brown wrote in the company blog. “We started with Kubernetes cost monitoring, and we’ve proudly become the most widely adopted solution in the cloud native ecosystem. Now, as a result of this merger, we’re poised to accelerate our mission by delivering broader, end-to-end cost management solutions to teams everywhere.”

It’s worth noting that Kubecost is also the company behind OpenCost, a vendor-neutral open source project that forms the core of Kubecost’s commercial offering. OpenCost, which launched in 2022, is part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s cohort of sandbox projects.

IBM says it will integrate Kubecost into its FinOps Suite, which combines Cloudability (which Apptio acquired in 2019) and Turbonomic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw IBM integrate Kubecost/OpenCost deeper into its OpenShift enterprise platform, too.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. Kubecost raised its last funding round, a $25 million Series A round led by Coatue Management, in 2022. First Round Capital led the company’s $5.5 million seed round in 2021.