Home  >  Companies  >  Fluidstack
Fluidstack
GPU rental service connecting AI startups with underutilized data center compute capacity

Revenue

$180.00M

2024

Growth Rate (y/y)

678%

2024

Funding

$3.00M

2019

Details
Headquarters
London
CEO
César Maklary
Website
Milestones
FOUNDING YEAR
2018

Revenue

Sacra estimates that Fluidstack reached $180M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in December 2024, reflecting 620% year-over-year growth from $25M in 2023.

Fluidstack operates a dual revenue model divided between its marketplace platform and higher-margin private cloud services. The marketplace business, which connects customers to third-party GPU capacity, contributes approximately 38% of revenue, with an average contract value of around $340K. The private cloud segment, where Fluidstack owns and operates GPU infrastructure directly, accounts for 62% of revenue, with contract values averaging over $100M.

The company manages more than 100,000 GPUs across its network and serves AI companies such as Meta, Mistral, Character.AI, Poolside, and Black Forest Labs. Forward visibility has increased with two 10-year hosting agreements with TeraWulf, totaling $6.7B in contracted revenue starting in 2026, supported by Google's financial guarantee.

Valuation

Fluidstack raised a $200M Series A in February 2025, led by private equity firm Cacti. In March 2019, the company raised a $3M seed round with participation from Seedcamp, Mercuri, and 7 Global Capital. In 2024, Fluidstack secured an additional $24.7M through a SAFE agreement and $37.5M in debt financing from undisclosed investors and lenders.

The company has also obtained debt financing capacity of up to $10B, secured by GPU assets through Macquarie Group. GPU-collateralized financing has gained traction as a funding mechanism within the AI infrastructure sector. Total disclosed equity funding to date amounts to approximately $203M across all rounds.

Product

Fluidstack operates as an AI-focused cloud platform offering GPU compute capacity through marketplace and private cloud models. Customers can access GPU clusters ranging from 8 to 30,000 units via a web console or API. Billing options include on-demand hourly rates, reserved instances with commitments of 30 days or more, and fully custom private cloud deployments.

The platform is built on two primary technologies: Atlas OS and Lighthouse. Atlas OS, a bare-metal operating system, automates server imaging, provisions Kubernetes or Slurm environments, and enables cloud-like scaling without requiring manual hardware configuration. Lighthouse provides real-time monitoring and predictive optimization, automatically restarting failed jobs and replacing problematic hardware to ensure uninterrupted training runs.

Fluidstack's infrastructure supports the latest GPU hardware, including H100, H200, B200, and GB200 chips, all validated to achieve at least 95% of theoretical performance. Its network employs InfiniBand fabric capable of connecting over 12,000 GPUs for single-job training runs. The platform eliminates surprise billing by charging zero egress and ingress fees.

Clusters are single-tenant by default to prevent performance interference. The platform also meets enterprise-grade compliance standards, including HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type 2. Technical support is included in pricing, with 15-minute response times and 24/7 monitoring.

Business Model

Fluidstack operates a B2B model with two revenue streams that utilize different approaches to GPU infrastructure. The marketplace business connects customers to third-party data center capacity, functioning as an intermediary that aggregates spare GPU resources across partner facilities. This asset-light model generates lower margins but requires minimal capital investment.

The private cloud business is Fluidstack's higher-margin offering, where the company owns and operates GPU infrastructure directly. These deployments typically involve multi-year contracts with upfront payments, resulting in better revenue predictability and higher average contract values. The revenue mix has shifted from 38% marketplace to 62% private cloud.

Pricing is structured as a credit-based consumption model for smaller deployments, while larger enterprise customers negotiate fixed-term contracts. The company's cost structure includes GPU hardware purchases (75-80% of capital expenditure), facility costs (20-25%), and ongoing operational expenses for power, cooling, and technical support.

Fluidstack's financing strategy relies on GPU-collateralized debt, enabling the company to scale hardware investments without equity dilution. This approach has supported capacity expansion while maintaining operational control, in contrast to competitors that use customer pre-funding arrangements.

Competition

Neocloud giants

CoreWeave reports over $3.9 billion in run-rate revenue with 62% adjusted EBITDA margins. The company leverages long-term power and colocation contracts alongside priority access to Nvidia supply chains to offer pricing below hyperscalers, securing customers through multi-year agreements. Its scale and structured financing model position it as a key benchmark within the sector.

Crusoe transitioned from Bitcoin mining to AI cloud services, generating $276 million in revenue in 2024 with projections nearing $1 billion for 2025. The company differentiates itself by using stranded natural gas for power and portable data center pods. However, its $12 billion capital expenditure plan and reliance on the OpenAI Stargate project introduce significant execution risks.

Asset-light aggregators

GPU marketplaces such as Vast.ai, RunPod, and Paperspace operate on Fluidstack's original marketplace model, aggregating spare capacity from smaller providers. These platforms lack the capital to develop dedicated infrastructure, primarily serving smaller customers with short-term requirements and competing on price and availability.

Lambda Labs and Together AI prioritize optimized performance over capacity aggregation. Together AI has developed proprietary CUDA kernels that deliver 10-15% performance gains, while Lambda Labs focuses on high-speed networking and purpose-built clusters tailored to specific AI workloads.

Hyperscaler alternatives

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are advancing proprietary chip technologies to reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs. Google's TPU v5p, Amazon's Trainium2, and Microsoft's Maia chips aim to lower costs per FLOP by 30-40% compared to current H100 deployments. Google's collaboration with Fluidstack to host TPUs in third-party data centers marks a strategic effort to expand distribution beyond its own facilities.

TAM Expansion

Sovereign AI programs

Fluidstack's agreement with the French government to develop a 1GW AI supercomputer represents a €10B initial phase within a potential €40B project. This establishes the company as a supplier for European sovereign compute initiatives, where data residency and energy independence are key requirements.

The partnership utilizes France's nuclear power grid to supply low-carbon electricity, addressing both cost and sustainability considerations. Similar sovereign AI initiatives across the EU, Gulf states, and APAC regions may adopt this model, with Fluidstack's European operations offering competitive differentiation compared to US-based providers.

Vertical integration opportunities

Atlas OS and Lighthouse could function as standalone software products for enterprises managing their own GPU infrastructure. Offering these tools as SaaS subscriptions would enable Fluidstack to address the broader DevOps and MLOps market, which generates several billion dollars in annual revenue.

The transition from AI training to inference workloads presents an additional growth opportunity. While current revenue is concentrated on large training clusters, 70-80% of AI workloads shift to inference once models are deployed in production. Providing low-latency, regional inference services could significantly increase wallet share per customer and tap into the projected $26.6B GPU-as-a-Service market by 2030.

Geographic expansion

Fluidstack's partnerships with Borealis Data Center in Iceland and the Nordics offer access to renewable energy and natural cooling efficiencies. Planned exascale GPU clusters with Nvidia and Dell could establish a European hub for customers seeking alternatives to US-based infrastructure.

In North America, partnerships with TeraWulf will create up to 450MW of AI capacity powered by low-cost, carbon-free energy in New York. Google's $3.2B backstop of these lease obligations mitigates execution risk and provides a foundation for pursuing US federal contracting opportunities.

Risks

Nvidia dependence: Fluidstack's business model relies heavily on Nvidia GPU hardware, exposing it to risks from supply constraints, pricing fluctuations, and competition from alternative chip architectures. Developments such as Google's TPU partnership and Amazon's Trainium initiative could disrupt the Nvidia-centric ecosystem, potentially reducing demand for traditional GPU-based cloud services.

Execution complexity: The company's expansion plans, including the 1GW French supercomputer and multiple TeraWulf deployments, require precise execution in areas such as permitting, power connections, and hardware deployment. Delays in any of these areas could affect revenue forecasts and customer confidence, particularly given the extended lead times associated with data center construction and grid integration.

Debt servicing: Fluidstack's $10B GPU-collateralized financing facility creates substantial leverage, necessitating consistent capacity utilization to meet debt obligations. A decline in AI compute demand or increased pricing competition could pressure cash flow, potentially leading to asset sales or equity dilution to manage debt servicing requirements.

News

DISCLAIMERS

This report is for information purposes only and is not to be used or considered as an offer or the solicitation of an offer to sell or to buy or subscribe for securities or other financial instruments. Nothing in this report constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice or a representation that any investment or strategy is suitable or appropriate to your individual circumstances or otherwise constitutes a personal trade recommendation to you.

This research report has been prepared solely by Sacra and should not be considered a product of any person or entity that makes such report available, if any.

Information and opinions presented in the sections of the report were obtained or derived from sources Sacra believes are reliable, but Sacra makes no representation as to their accuracy or completeness. Past performance should not be taken as an indication or guarantee of future performance, and no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made regarding future performance. Information, opinions and estimates contained in this report reflect a determination at its original date of publication by Sacra and are subject to change without notice.

Sacra accepts no liability for loss arising from the use of the material presented in this report, except that this exclusion of liability does not apply to the extent that liability arises under specific statutes or regulations applicable to Sacra. Sacra may have issued, and may in the future issue, other reports that are inconsistent with, and reach different conclusions from, the information presented in this report. Those reports reflect different assumptions, views and analytical methods of the analysts who prepared them and Sacra is under no obligation to ensure that such other reports are brought to the attention of any recipient of this report.

All rights reserved. All material presented in this report, unless specifically indicated otherwise is under copyright to Sacra. Sacra reserves any and all intellectual property rights in the report. All trademarks, service marks and logos used in this report are trademarks or service marks or registered trademarks or service marks of Sacra. Any modification, copying, displaying, distributing, transmitting, publishing, licensing, creating derivative works from, or selling any report is strictly prohibited. None of the material, nor its content, nor any copy of it, may be altered in any way, transmitted to, copied or distributed to any other party, without the prior express written permission of Sacra. Any unauthorized duplication, redistribution or disclosure of this report will result in prosecution.