Seattle-based cloud startup Archera on Wednesday announced a $7 million Series A.
The startup currently has 18 employees, according to co-founder and CEO Aran Khanna, and it plans to more than double its headcount by the end of 2022. He added that Archera plans to keep building new products with the funding, as well as accelerate its growth through sales.
Khanna estimated about 40% of the company's employees are based in the Seattle area.
"A lot of the core employees and leadership has been based out of Seattle," Khanna said. "While we're a hybrid company, we're really bullish on the Seattle area."
On its website, Archera has open roles in engineering, sales and customer success.
Archera, which was founded in 2019, over the past couple of weeks rebranded from Reserved.ai. The company uses forecasting and automation to help clients reduce their cloud costs, helping them avoid overpaying for more storage than they need. Archera also offers a buyback program if clients purchase too much cloud storage.
Its customers include Hiya, Fortive and Kumu. According to the company, Archera has saved customers more than $80 million in cloud costs.
"The difficulty in the cloud is just the tribal knowledge that's inherent in how you use it," Khanna said. "Customers, they don't want to get a Ph.D. in cloud pricing."
Archera has a coworking space in Pioneer Square that is optional for employees to use given the Covid-19 pandemic. Khanna said the company will make decisions around expanding its footprint based on its growth.
Khanna had an internship working on Microsoft Azure, and he also spent some of his career working at Amazon Web Services. Given that both cloud behemoths are based in the Seattle area, Khanna said the region is a good place to grow Archera.
"You have a lot of great folks here who understand where these businesses are going and where the customers are going," Khanna said. "There's just an incredible amount of serendipity being in a city like this."
