Singapore-based cloud infrastructure startup OrtCloud has raised $1.7 million in a pre-seed funding round, marking an early step in its efforts to build specialized cloud solutions for artificial intelligence workloads. The round was led by Golden Gate Ventures, with participation from early-stage investor Antler, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company’s vision.
The funding will be used to accelerate product development, particularly around OrtCloud’s virtual machine infrastructure designed for AI-native environments. The company is focused on creating systems that can handle fixed workloads and AI agent-based applications, an area that is seeing rapid growth as enterprises adopt more advanced AI tools.
OrtCloud aims to solve a key challenge in traditional cloud computing—performance variability and unpredictable costs. Its platform uses fixed-resource virtual machine tiers, allowing users to scale workloads by upgrading tiers rather than relying on shared infrastructure. This approach is designed to deliver consistent performance while offering more predictable pricing for businesses.
The company offers both a hosted cloud platform and an on-premises deployment model, enabling enterprises to run the same orchestration and policy systems on their own hardware. This flexibility is particularly important for organizations with strict data residency requirements or those needing isolated and secure computing environments.
OrtCloud has already attracted early enterprise customers, including organizations such as OpenAI, Samsung, LG Innotek, Konkuk University, and KAIST University. Demand has been especially strong among teams building AI systems that require stable, always-on computing environments with minimal interference.
The fundraising comes amid a broader shift in cloud infrastructure demand driven by AI adoption. Industry estimates suggest that agent-based AI workloads are creating a new infrastructure category worth over $20 billion, with Southeast Asia alone representing a $50 billion to $80 billion opportunity. OrtCloud plans to use the new capital to expand its presence across Asia-Pacific and the US, while strengthening its go-to-market strategy and team capabilities.
