MilkStraw AI Raises $2M to Simplify Cloud Infrastructure Management
MilkStraw AI has closed a $2 million seed round led by VentureSouq, with participation from Ibtikar Fund and Musaab Hakimi. The company says the funding will accelerate product development and scaling as it focuses on helping fast-growing teams manage and optimise cloud spend with less manual effort.
Founded in 2023, MilkStraw AI is already used by 100+ startups, including Thndr, Maqsam, Ziina, and Beyond AI. The appeal is straightforward: reduce waste, surface issues in real time, and give engineering managers and product leaders a clear, actionable view of costs.
Why it matters for product and engineering leaders
- Better cost visibility without extra meetings, dashboards, or custom scripts.
- Fewer handoffs: recommendations that translate directly into changes engineers can make.
- Budget predictability for quarterly planning and new feature launches.
What's new in the product
- The Feed: a real-time cloud activity stream that highlights spend-impacting changes and anomalies as they happen.
- Right Sizing: detects underused resources and recommends adjustments before costs pile up.
- AI conversational layer: lets teams query usage, costs, and actions in natural language to speed up decisions.
"MilkStraw is a powerhouse for cloud cost optimization tools. The validation speaks for itself: the vast majority of our users became paying customers and we've had zero churn in 16 months. That's the kind of product-market fit you can build a company on." - Ahmed Itman, Senior SRE, Thndr
"Most cloud cost tools create more work for engineering teams. MilkStraw actually does the work for them. That's a meaningful difference, and the retention numbers prove it." - Tammer Qaddumi, Co-Founder and General Partner, VentureSouq
Signals to watch
- Integration breadth: coverage across major clouds, services, and data paths is key for full accountability.
- Governance and controls: role-based access, change logs, and approval flows keep finance and engineering aligned.
- Measurable ROI: time-to-value, cost avoided, and percent of recommendations applied should be trackable.
MilkStraw AI points to strong product-market fit, citing zero churn over 16 months and high conversion from trial to paid. If they continue to automate the "last mile" of cost actions-not just reporting-they'll save teams hours each sprint and tighten budget discipline.
For leaders formalising cloud-finance practices, the FinOps framework is a useful reference. And if you're upskilling your team on practical AI for operations, explore our AI courses by job role.
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