How to Invest in the Next AWS

Cloud technology represents a huge market. Can it get even bigger? This Silicon Valley deep tech company believes so.

The cloud is big business. AWS reported nearly $20 billion last second quarter and financially supports Amazon’s other businesses. That’s because many companies around the world are now running their software in the cloud, including most tech companies. However, the operating system they run their software on is 30 years old and based on an even older operating system which is now 50 years old. That system is Linux – the de facto operating system on the server side.

When Linux was released 30 years ago, it was built for old computers like 286 and 386. That was a full decade before VMWare successfully commercialized virtualization, and 15 years before this tiny little bookstore in Seattle, Amazon, created Amazon Web Services. So it works, but only because engineers put a square pin in a round hole. After all, creating a new operating system is a lot of work, and no one has ever attempted to create one specifically designed for cloud computing.

Operating system companies don’t come along that often. What if you could have been a business angel for Microsoft or Apple?



NanoVMs does just that with its groundbreaking Unikernel-based system. NanoVMs claims it can run the same workloads up to 200% faster on Google Cloud and up to 300% faster on Amazon Web Services, all with strong security such as: with no users, passwords, or remote logins, and no ability to run any software on the system other than the one running.

NanoVMs has deep technological roots, receives grants from the National Science Foundation, US Air Force and Department of Energy, and is in the ABMS pipeline with an ID/IQ of $950 million from the US Air Force. NanoVMs has received revenue from around the world and has received three patents with three more pending.

Well, to help spread the word about its new Unikernel technology, NanoVMs has launched an equity-based crowdfunding campaign which allows ordinary investors to invest. NanoVMs is already backed by venture capital firms such as Initialized Capital, Joe Montana’s L2 Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, famed cybersecurity investor Ron Gula of Gula Tech Ventures, Hack.VC, and others.

While commercial open-source companies typically take a few years of R&D to get off the ground, they generate massive returns for early investors. Traditionally, these opportunities have not been available to early investors, but changes by the SEC last year allow even non-accredited investors to invest in companies in so-called “Reg CF” rounds of up to $5 million per year This gives you the opportunity to invest in NanoVMs early on. Investing in private companies ahead of a liquidity event like an IPO or acquisition yields far better returns than after a company’s IPO.

How big is the chance? If you look at the cross-section of the cybersecurity market, which is currently valued at $140 billion to $180 billion depending on who you ask, and the DevOps market, which is projected to reach $15 billion in the next few years, it is a huge market.

Most of the cyber companies that you find at the big trade shows like RSA or the recent BlackHat in Vegas focus on scanning for hacked systems or systems to be hacked, while unikernel inherently prevent attackers from running random programs like illegally carry out crypto mining operations.

“Breaking into a server is like breaking into a house. The criminal may have kicked in the door or entered through a side window, but that’s not why they’re there. They’re here for your guns, your money, and your flat screen TV. The same applies when hackers break into servers. Attackers could care less about your software – they want to run their software – it could be as simple as stealing the database or mining cryptocurrencies. The trick with unikernels is that they are only designed to run a single program as a virtual machine. There is no support for running multiple programs on the same virtual machine.” explains the CEO of NanoVMs.

What makes this such an explosive opportunity is that much of the software running on Linux in the cloud is open source. Open source is a marketing strategy used by technology vendors to distribute their software. Indeed, if consulted the COSSI $100 million We can find many billion dollar companies all based on server side operating system disrupting NanoVMs. NanoVMs not only run this existing software faster and more securely, but also open the door to completely new market entrants.

Many of these companies — including ElasticSearch with a market cap of $8.4 billion, Confluent with a market cap of $9.11 billion, and DataBricks with a whopping $38 billion in core software — are open source. Many of these companies have their own competitors. For example, a quick Google search for Elastic reveals more than half a dozen different ElasticSearch vendors. By running the software as a unkernel, the various vendors are immediately pitted against each other, creating a virtuous cycle. The same process can be run again and again against all the different open source vendors out there, unleashing a tsunami of opportunities.

If you’re looking for an early-stage deep tech investment in Silicon Valley, NanoVMs is worth considering. To learn more about investing, visit their Information page for investors .