MilkStraw AI

MilkStraw AI offers a platform for intelligent cloud cost optimization, specifically targeting Amazon Web Services (AWS) expenses. Founded in 2023 by Jawad Shreim (CEO), Anas Abdullah (CTO), and Ibraheem Tuffaha, the company was established to address the significant challenge of managing and reducing high cloud infrastructure costs. The idea originated from the founders' own frustrating experiences with unpredictable and escalating cloud bills while working at a previous AI-based hedge fund, where they observed the immense difficulty in forecasting and controlling these expenses.

The company operates in the cloud cost management market, serving fast-growing technology companies that rely heavily on cloud infrastructure. MilkStraw AI's business model is performance-based, meaning it takes a percentage of the savings it generates for its clients, aligning the company's success directly with its customers' cost reductions. This approach eliminates upfront costs for services like monitoring, making it an attractive proposition for businesses looking to de-risk their optimization efforts. Since its launch in April 2024, the firm has acquired several clients, including notable names like Magnitt, Voltlines, and Floranow.

The core of MilkStraw AI's service is a platform that automates the optimization process, allowing engineering teams to focus on product development rather than manual cost management. It tackles one of the largest components of cloud spending, EC2 instances, by providing the cost benefits of long-term reserved instances with the flexibility of on-demand pricing. The platform incentivizes clients to take three-year commitments by guaranteeing it will take over those commitments if they are no longer needed. By managing a large portfolio of these server reservations, MilkStraw AI functions like a hedge fund, using predictive AI models to forecast usage patterns and trade contracts in real-time between customers to ensure high utilization and efficiency. In January 2025, the company announced a $600,000 pre-seed funding round led by Flat6Labs, with participation from Angel Spark, Beyond Capital, and other angel investors, to expand its team and accelerate product development.

Keywords: cloud cost optimization, AWS cost management, FinOps, cloud billing, reserved instances, on-demand pricing, infrastructure cost reduction, AWS savings, cloud financial management, Jawad Shreim, Anas Abdullah, Ibraheem Tuffaha, Flat6Labs, server reservation management, EC2 optimization, automated cloud savings, performance-based pricing, cloud infrastructure AI, tech startup cost control