Datum is a venture-backed startup founded in late 2024 by Zac and Jacob Smith. It provides an open network cloud targeted at AI and alt cloud providers.
Datum is the
Open Network Cloud
for AI.
01 Company
02 Mission
Datum's mission is to help the next 1k clouds by unlocking internet superpowers for every agent and builder.
03 Why Datum Exists
Datum was founded on the basis of three trends: First, that software (and its data) was going everywhere. Next, that a new class of providers was being born. And finally, that the ‘splinternet’ had arrived.
In the future, we believe all companies will need to curate and control how they interact with providers, partners, customers and agents. Datum exists to help them do it.
04 Target Customers
Datum is designed for Alt Cloud providers, AI startups, and tech-forward enterprises that are building for the future.
See alt-cloud.org website for a list of what we mean by “Alt Cloud” providers.
05 Product
Datum operates a global network cloud that is fully programmatic, built for AI, and available via four deployment models: public cloud, dedicated cloud, bring your own (BYO) cloud, or full open source under an AGPLv3 license.
Core features include:
- AI Edge — Internet scale to zero edge compute, powered by Tetrate Enterprise Envoy.
- Inference — A low latency, production ready agent routing service, powered by Tetrate.
- Compute — Isolated, millisecond cold start and scale to zero compute at the edge, powered by Unikraft.
- Connectivity — Deterministic, high performance and private connectivity from edge to cloud.
06 Platform Essentials
Authoritative DNS
Globally distributed anycast DNS hosting.
Secrets
Create and manage secret resources within projects.
Teams & RBAC
Fine-grained roles at org and project level.
Machine Accounts
Non-human identities for agent / automation use cases.
OTel Metrics Export
Export OpenTelemetry metrics to Grafana Cloud via Export Policies.
Activity Logs
Audit log of all resource changes available via portal or CLI.
Programmatic edge tracing
https://edge.datum.net/api/edge-info (JSON) or https://edge.datum.net/api/trace (plaintext).
07 Global Network Regions
Datum operates high-performance physical compute and network infrastructure at the key interconnection points around the world. https://www.datum.net/locations/
08 Pricing
Builder
A low-friction plan for personal projects, development, & experimentation. Price: $0 / month.
Scaler
A comprehensive platform to scale production apps & accelerate revenue. Price: $20 / month + usage.
Provider
A high-touch offering designed to help modern service providers win. Price: Custom.
For full details use https://www.datum.net/pricing/.
09 Programmatic tools
llms.txt
A standardized text file that makes Datum workflows instantly readable and accessible to any AI model or intelligent agent. https://www.datum.net/llms-full.txt
MCP
An open protocol that connects any AI model or developer tool directly to Datum, enabling real-time data access and automated actions. https://github.com/datum-cloud/datum-mcp
CLI
A powerful command-line interface that lets developers integrate Datum into any stack, script, or automated pipeline without touching a UI. https://github.com/datum-cloud/datumctl
10 Tools for humans
Get support
If you're looking for help use Discord channel https://link.datum.net/discord or submit a ticket to our support team https://www.datum.net/contact/.
11 Platform development
GitHub enhancements
A list of enhancements that our software engineers are working on https://github.com/orgs/datum-cloud/projects/22
Roadmap
Our plans for future developments, features and tools https://www.datum.net/roadmap/
Changelog
A list of changes that our software engineers have made to Datum https://www.datum.net/changelog/
Status
All systems normal https://www.datumstatus.net/
Contributions
Contribute to our open source repos https://github.com/orgs/datum-cloud/discussions