Tigris Raises $25M to Build the Storage Layer for the AI Era
Tigris Raises $25M to Build the Storage Layer for the AI Era
Led by Spark Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and others
Today I'm thrilled to share that Tigris has raised our $25M Series A, led by Spark Capital, with continued support from Andreessen Horowitz.
Tigris is a globally distributed storage service, purpose-built for AI. We make it simple for developers to store and process training data at scale, serve models with low latency anywhere in the world, and move freely across clouds without paying the "cloud tax" of egress fees.
For AI teams, storage isn't just where the data sits; it's the foundation every workload runs on. Yet the big clouds still treat storage as a sidecar to their bundle of services. The result: vendor lock-in, hidden costs, and performance bottlenecks that slow builders down. That model worked for the last generation of workloads, but in AI it limits innovation.
In the age of AI, lock-in isn't just costly, it slows you down. Innovation today is about performance, speed of iteration, and shipping faster than ever. If your data is trapped, your ability to innovate is trapped with it.
With Tigris, AI teams get storage built for their workflows:
- Training at limitless scale
- Inference without borders
- Agents that collaborate safely
- Freedom to chase compute
- Faster iteration
This new round of funding gives us the resources to go further - including deploying our own hardware in datacenters worldwide. Unlike most startups that build on Big Cloud, Tigris is operating on its own infrastructure.
Tigris Co-Founder Ovais Tariq, selfie with Tigris' hardware in a datacenter installation
Owning the metal gives us full control over cost and performance, and lets us differentiate from Big Cloud. Running on our own metal means we can pass savings back to customers and scale without compromise.
Traction
Some of the most prominent multimodal and media-generation AI platforms are already built on Tigris:
- fal (fal.ai) - powering the fastest generative AI inference globally, fresh off a major fundraise.
- KREA (krea.ai) - a creative AI platform redefining digital media.
- hedra (hedra.com) - a multimodal AI platform enabling creators and enterprises to build with AI.
Tigris also powers the new wave of developer-first cloud providers:
- Fly.io (fly.io) - the public cloud for developers.
- Beam (beam.cloud) - infrastructure for building and scaling generative AI apps.
From cutting-edge AI startups to next-gen cloud platforms, the fastest-growing companies are choosing Tigris as their storage foundation.
Tigris is becoming the storage layer of choice for the builders shaping the future of AI.
Tigris is building the new storage foundation for every AI company. This is the same team that built and scaled Uber's global storage platform, which is exactly the operational rigor you need to run a foundational infrastructure platform. We couldn't be more excited to partner with them.
The next era of infrastructure will be defined by best-of-breed providers that push beyond the limits of today's cloud platforms. Just as AWS redefined how we build applications, the rise of AI is redefining how we think about storage, compute, and networking. Tigris embodies this shift: a team with deep storage pedigree reimagining what the storage layer must look like for the future of the cloud.
Why Us
My co-founders and I built Uber's global storage platform, scaling systems like Docstore, Herb, and DBEvents to hundreds of billions of requests daily. We know what it takes to run storage at global scale, and we're bringing that same discipline and ambition to AI.
We want to give builders their freedom back. In the age of AI, the best product should win, not the one tied to a single bundled stack.
Looking Ahead
Cloud is ripe for disruption. In AI, we're already seeing developers choose new compute providers like CoreWeave and Together AI over the big clouds, because they want best-of-breed, not bundles. The same shift is coming to storage.
Taking on Big Cloud requires more than APIs on rented servers. It means owning the stack - from hardware to software - so we can innovate without compromise and give builders an alternative that's faster, fairer, and free from lock-in.
The future of cloud should be a level playing field, where specialized providers compete on quality and innovation, not on who can lock in the most data. Tigris is that best-of-breed storage layer, and we're just getting started.
Object Storage for the AI Era
Ready to build on the storage layer for the AI era? Join the fastest-growing AI companies already using Tigris for their storage foundation.