Cloudgeni Raises €858k to Deploy AI Agents That Build and Operate Cloud Infrastructure Autonomously
Cloud misconfiguration is not a niche problem. According to industry data, it accounts for 99% of all cloud security failures, and as infrastructure environments grow more complex, the cost and expertise required to manage governance manually is rising at a pace that most DevSecOps teams cannot match. Cloudgeni, an Oslo‑based startup founded in 2024, is building AI agents that address this problem at its root, and the company has now raised €858,000 to take that solution to new markets.
The funding round, equivalent to approximately $1 million, was backed by a coalition of Nordic investors: the byFounders Angel Collective, the angel investor network affiliated with Nordic VC byFounders; Norwegian venture capital firms Startuplab and Antler; Vegard Gullaksen Veiteberg, CEO of tablet maker reMarkable; and Nicolaj Højer Nielsen, a Danish serial entrepreneur and angel investor.
The capital is earmarked for Nordic expansion and entry into the United States market, where the company recently closed its first paying American customer.
Founded at the Intersection of Microsoft Engineering and McKinsey Strategy
Cloudgeni was co‑founded by Davlet Dzhakishev, a former Microsoft developer who serves as CEO, and Iuliia Petryshyn Thuen, a former McKinsey consultant who leads operations. The combination of deep technical infrastructure knowledge and commercial strategy experience reflects the dual challenge the company is solving: building AI agents that are both technically capable of managing complex cloud environments and safe enough for enterprise adoption.
That last word matters. Autonomous agents operating in cloud infrastructure carry real risk if designed poorly. One misconfigured action by an agent in a production environment can cause cascading failures. Dzhakishev has spoken directly to this point, noting that the company's agents are designed in a way that makes adoption safe and reliable for the system owner. Cloudgeni follows a deterministic AI approach for cloud governance, automating the detection and remediation of configuration drift while delivering continuous compliance proof without adding overhead to DevSecOps teams.
The platform automatically codifies unmanaged cloud resources, remediates configuration issues in infrastructure as code, and enforces security and compliance standards on an ongoing basis. Teams using Cloudgeni can eliminate large portions of manual cloud operations, reduce risk exposure, and ship faster without sacrificing confidence in the underlying environment.
Enterprise Traction in Norway Before US Expansion
Before raising external capital at scale, Cloudgeni built credibility where it matters most: with large enterprise customers in a demanding operating environment. The company has already secured contracts with Hydro, one of Norway's largest industrial groups, and Havila, the Norwegian shipping company, two organisations where infrastructure reliability and security compliance are not optional concerns. The company has also established a partnership with IBM, extending its reach into a broader enterprise ecosystem.
These references are significant for a pre‑seed stage company and reflect a sales motion built on technical trust rather than broad market messaging. Industrial and logistics enterprises have operational environments where cloud misconfiguration can have consequences far beyond a software bug, making the bar for vendor trust unusually high.
The US expansion marks a shift in ambition. Cloudgeni's first American paying customer signals that the value proposition translates across markets, though scaling in the US will require navigating a far more competitive cloud security and DevOps landscape.
The Market Context
The global cloud infrastructure management market is expanding rapidly as enterprise cloud adoption deepens and multi‑cloud environments become the norm rather than the exception. The more complex a cloud environment becomes, the harder it is to maintain consistent governance manually, and the more attractive autonomous, AI‑driven management becomes.
Nordic investors have been active in backing infrastructure AI startups in the current cycle. byFounders, Antler, and Startuplab all carry strong track records in early‑stage Nordic technology companies, and the involvement of operating executives like Veiteberg alongside professional angels brings both capital and practical scaling experience to Cloudgeni's cap table.
The company is actively building its team to support growth, with a focus on AI engineering talent capable of advancing the core agent architecture. For a startup operating at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, security compliance, and autonomous AI agents, the timing feels well aligned with where enterprise IT spending is heading. Cloudgeni can be found at cloudgeni.ai.
