Enterprise

WarpStream is building a cheaper, cloud-native data streaming service

Comment

Data streams concept.
Image Credits: Weiquan Lin / Getty Images

When the open source streaming service Apache Kafka was created in 2011 at LinkedIn, it was a different world. Most companies were still on prem. The notion of cloud computing was just beginning to emerge. WarpStream, an early-stage startup, sees the value of streaming in a cloud-native context and built a new solution from the ground up based on the Apache Kafka protocol, but designed for the cloud age.

Today the company announced a $20 million investment.

WarpStream CEO Richard Artoul says that he and his co-founder, CTO Ryan Worl, found in their previous jobs that moving data into Kafka was complex and expensive and they wanted to change that. “If you were building something today that looked like Apache Kafka like we did with WarpStream, you would take a really different approach than was taken back in 2011 when Kafka was first designed, and so that’s why we think now’s a really good time for us to build something new that can actually meaningfully drive down costs and operational burden for people,” Artoul told TechCrunch.

The way they do that is by taking advantage of today’s cloud environment to separate compute from storage using an object storage service like Amazon S3. By taking this approach, they have been able to eliminate inter-zone networking costs, which often represent 80% or more of the total cost of running large scale Kafka workloads, according to the company.

“When you interact and store data in cloud object storage you get to sidestep all these networking fees that plague these big data systems when they get lifted, shifted into the cloud,” he said. “And a lot of the really hard problems around data durability and replication that Kafka had to solve on its own by copying the data three times, replicating it and making sure that data was never lost, we’re able to offload those problems to the object storage layer itself, and that ends up making the system a lot easier and cheaper to operate.”

Artoul and Worl were working together at Datadog when they helped develop a storage system called Husky. Today, if a Datadog customer is searching through their application logs, they’re actually using Husky. Datadog was also a big Kafka user. “Based on our experience building the kind of storage system on top of object storage we had built at Datadog, we felt like streaming systems should work the same way. And so last year we left Datadog to start working on it,” he said.

They are taking two approaches, one where customers can essentially bring their own cloud and install WarpStream, and one where they offer a fully managed serverless option. The BYOC version is available starting today. The company has also included a calculator right on the pricing page to figure out how much it will cost to run WarpStream.

The founders brought some of the folks who helped build Husky to build the new system, and today they have nine employees. The good news is that they are hiring and hope to double headcount by the end of the year.

The $20 million investment was led by Greylock and Amplify Partners with some data industry luminaries also chipping in with angel investments.

More TechCrunch

A dust-up between Evolve Bank & Trust, Mercury and Synapse has led TabaPay to abandon its acquisition plans of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse.

Infighting among fintech players has caused TabaPay to ‘pull out’ from buying bankrupt Synapse

The problem is not the media, but the message.

Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is disgusting

The Twitter for Android client was “a demo app that Google had created and gave to us,” says Particle co-founder and ex-Twitter employee Sara Beykpour.

Google built some of the first social apps for Android, including Twitter and others

WhatsApp is updating its mobile apps for a fresh and more streamlined look, while also introducing a new “darker dark mode,” the company announced on Thursday. The messaging app says…

WhatsApp’s latest update streamlines navigation and adds a ‘darker dark mode’

Plinky lets you solve the problem of saving and organizing links from anywhere with a focus on simplicity and customization.

Plinky is an app for you to collect and organize links easily

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: How to watch

For cancer patients, medicines administered in clinical trials can help save or extend lives. But despite thousands of trials in the United States each year, only 3% to 5% of…

Triomics raises $15M Series A to automate cancer clinical trials matching

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tap, tap.…

Tesla drives Luminar lidar sales and Motional pauses robotaxi plans

The newly announced “Public Content Policy” will now join Reddit’s existing privacy policy and content policy to guide how Reddit’s data is being accessed and used by commercial entities and…

Reddit locks down its public data in new content policy, says use now requires a contract

Eva Ho plans to step away from her position as general partner at Fika Ventures, the Los Angeles-based seed firm she co-founded in 2016. Fika told LPs of Ho’s intention…

Fika Ventures co-founder Eva Ho will step back from the firm after its current fund is deployed

In a post on Werner Vogels’ personal blog, he details Distill, an open-source app he built to transcribe and summarize conference calls.

Amazon’s CTO built a meeting-summarizing app for some reason

Paris-based Mistral AI, a startup working on open source large language models — the building block for generative AI services — has been raising money at a $6 billion valuation,…

Sources: Mistral AI raising at a $6B valuation, SoftBank ‘not in’ but DST is

You can expect plenty of AI, but probably not a lot of hardware.

Google I/O 2024: What to expect

Dating apps and other social friend-finders are being put on notice: Dating app giant Bumble is looking to make more acquisitions.

Bumble says it’s looking to M&A to drive growth

When Class founder Michael Chasen was in college, he and a buddy came up with the idea for Blackboard, an online classroom organizational tool. His original company was acquired for…

Blackboard founder transforms Zoom add-on designed for teachers into business tool

Groww, an Indian investment app, has become one of the first startups from the country to shift its domicile back home.

Groww joins the first wave of Indian startups moving domiciles back home from US

Technology giant Dell notified customers on Thursday that it experienced a data breach involving customers’ names and physical addresses. In an email seen by TechCrunch and shared by several people…

Dell discloses data breach of customers’ physical addresses

Featured Article

Fairgen ‘boosts’ survey results using synthetic data and AI-generated responses

The Israeli startup has raised $5.5M for its platform that uses “statistical AI” to generate synthetic data that it says is as good as the real thing.

8 hours ago
Fairgen ‘boosts’ survey results using synthetic data and AI-generated responses

Hydrow, the at-home rowing machine maker, announced Thursday that it has acquired a majority stake in Speede Fitness, the company behind the AI-enabled strength training machine. The rowing startup also…

Rowing startup Hydrow acquires a majority stake in Speede Fitness as their CEO steps down

Call centers are embracing automation. There’s debate as to whether that’s a good thing, but it’s happening — and quite possibly accelerating. According to research firm TechSci Research, the global…

Retell AI lets companies build ‘voice agents’ to answer phone calls

TikTok is starting to automatically label AI-generated content that was made on other platforms, the company announced on Thursday. With this change, if a creator posts content on TikTok that…

TikTok will automatically label AI-generated content created on platforms like DALL·E 3

India’s mobile payments regulator is likely to extend the deadline for imposing market share caps on the popular UPI (unified payments interface) payments rail by one to two years, sources…

India likely to delay UPI market caps in win for PhonePe-Google Pay duopoly

Line Man Wongnai, an on-demand food delivery service in Thailand, is considering an initial public offering on a Thai exchange or the U.S. in 2025.

Thai food delivery app Line Man Wongnai weighs IPO in Thailand, US in 2025

Ever wonder why conversational AI like ChatGPT says “Sorry, I can’t do that” or some other polite refusal? OpenAI is offering a limited look at the reasoning behind its own…

OpenAI offers a peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions

The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is alerting thousands of filers whose private addresses were exposed following a second data spill in as many years. The…

US Patent and Trademark Office confirms another leak of filers’ address data

As part of an investigation into people involved in the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, the Spanish police obtained information from the encrypted services Wire and Proton, which helped the authorities…

Encrypted services Apple, Proton and Wire helped Spanish police identify activist

Match Group, the company that owns several dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, released its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, which shows that Tinder’s paying user base has decreased for…

Match looks to Hinge as Tinder fails

Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction, is expanding its wellness-focused, personal reflections journal to…

Gratitude Plus makes social networking positive, private and personal

With venture totals slipping year-over-year in key markets like the United States, and concern that venture firms themselves are struggling to raise more capital, founders might be worried. After all,…

Can AI help founders fundraise more quickly and easily?

Google has found a way to bring a variation of its clever “Circle to Search” gesture to iPhone users. The new interaction, launched in January, allows Android users to search…

Google brings a variation on ‘Circle to Search’ to iPhone users