Clastix, an Italian firm specializing in Kubernetes operations infrastructure, has announced a €2.9 million seed funding round to fuel team expansion and accelerate its kMetal platform. The financing was led by CDP Venture Capital Sgr, alongside backing from Mistral and VERTIS SGR via its Vertis Venture 6 Digital Sud fund, which receives partial support from the European Union's Next-Generation EU programme.
The company addresses a core challenge facing organizations deploying Kubernetes across multiple teams and environments: as cluster counts multiply, so do infrastructure demands and operational overhead. Clastix's approach consolidates Kubernetes control planes onto shared infrastructure, enabling platform teams to cut hardware costs, reduce complexity and manage larger deployments more efficiently.
Clastix's toolkit comprises two components. Kamaji serves as its open-source Hosted Control Plane engine, distributed under the Apache 2.0 licence. kMetal functions as the commercial offering, designed for fleet management, governance and production-grade operations. The startup reports that its technology is already deployed in production environments across Europe and North America, serving infrastructure teams in AI research, telecommunications, cloud platforms and government agencies.
Adriano Pezzuto, Clastix's co-founder and CEO, emphasized the strategic importance of infrastructure for emerging AI systems. He stated:
The next phase of AI won't be decided by models alone but by who controls the infrastructure layer beneath them. This funding goes toward building that layer for what's coming: expanding our R&D to better support AI-scale workloads, and growing our team to bring it into new markets as they build their AI infrastructure.
Adriano Pezzuto, co-founder and CEO of Clastix
Mistral, which uses Clastix's Kubernetes infrastructure, sees the investment as part of building Europe's AI foundation. Timothée Lacroix, Mistral's co-founder and CTO, commented:
By backing Clastix, we're investing in Europe's AI stack. A sovereign AI ecosystem isn't just about models – it's about the infrastructure layer that makes them run.
Timothée Lacroix, co-founder and CTO of Mistral
The capital will be deployed across product development, customer success, solutions engineering and market expansion for kMetal. Clastix also plans to strengthen its R&D capacity for AI-scale workloads and continue advancing Kamaji. Over the coming three years, the company expects to expand its workforce in response to customer demand and to build out enterprise capabilities.
Source: Tech.eu
