WOMBO saves $300K+ a year powering AI workloads—without adding headcount

Managing cloud costs is hard enough. Managing them as a lean, fast-growing AI company running compute-heavy workloads? That’s next-level challenging.

That’s exactly where WOMBO found themselves, until they started working with North.Cloud.

"Honestly, like a lot of early-stage companies, we didn’t fully understand cloud negotiation or the consequences of vendor lock-in."

Since partnering with North.Cloud, WOMBO has been saving $20,000+ a month—all while staying flexible, avoiding overcommitment, and freeing up valuable headspace for building products.

That breathing room has helped them invest in hiring, scale marketing, and extend their runway, without slowing down innovation. This positioned WOMBO to secure $9 million in funding from investors like NVIDIA and CoreWeave to grow their team, accelerate R&D, and bring their next big idea—w.ai, a decentralized AI supercomputer—to life.

Running a high-growth AI company is inherently complex—but doing it with volatile GPU usage, unpredictable scaling needs, and limited internal bandwidth? That was the reality for WOMBO.

From day one, their cloud costs were significant and only grew as product adoption soared. But while demand was growing, their internal capacity to manage infrastructure wasn’t.

1. Early commitment decisions limited flexibility

Like many early-stage companies, WOMBO signed a multi-year cloud commitment early on to reduce costs quickly. But as the business evolved, that rigid structure started holding them back.

“We signed a three-year deal, and while that was game-changing at the time, not having the flexibility to move our spend around definitely hurt us a lot.”

AI workloads are rarely predictable. WOMBO’s usage patterns were spiky by design, tied to user engagement, GPU availability, and rapid product experimentation. Traditional savings plans simply weren’t built for that kind of volatility.

Instead of supporting growth, the commitment structure became a constraint. It made it harder to scale infrastructure dynamically and respond to new opportunities.

2. Too few people, too many priorities

Despite its global reach and 200M+ downloads, WOMBO operates with a lean, focused team. Just 12 engineers power the entire platform, and only two people—Talha and WOMBO’s Head of Engineering—were responsible for managing AWS spend.

“We’re a super lean team. It was really hard for us to get granular—to purchase more savings plans or catch anomalies—on top of everything else we were doing.”

With limited time and headcount, tradeoffs had to be made. Every hour spent manually analyzing cloud costs was an hour taken away from building products, launching features, or supporting users.

That lack of visibility into their spend wasn’t just a financial risk—it was slowing down their ability to innovate at the pace the business demanded.

When an urgent cloud cost crunch hit, WOMBO needed more than just tooling—they needed a real partner. Their compute discount plan was about to expire, and the team faced a shortfall without a clear path forward.

That’s when North.Cloud stepped in. Not with a sales pitch, but with strategy, guidance, and real-time support.

“Matt (North.Cloud’s CEO) and the team went above and beyond. He didn’t just pitch us. They instead helped us navigate a pretty gnarly situation with our cloud contract, gave us advice on negotiations, and moved fast to get us onboarded.”

Before North.Cloud, WOMBO had explored other platforms but struggled to find a vendor that truly understood their needs. As a fast-moving AI company with a six-figure monthly cloud bill, they expected support. What they got instead was silence.

About their past partnership, WOMBO said, “For us, that spend is huge. But to them, we were a small fish. It was hard to get in touch with their team—even during urgent moments.”

That experience made it clear: WOMBO didn’t just need visibility. They needed a partner that could move fast, act proactively, and treat them like a priority.

Here’s why they ultimately chose North.Cloud:

• Fast, proactive, and hands-on: "Matt went above and beyond. He didn’t just pitch us—he helped us navigate a pretty gnarly situation with our cloud contract, gave us advice on negotiations, and moved fast to get us onboarded."
• ‍No heavy lift for WOMBO’s team: "Honestly, I barely even log in to the dashboard. North.Cloud proactively messages me if it notices anything, and every month when I check our bill, I see our costs going down. That’s all I need to know."‍
• Built for spiky AI workloads: “North.Cloud’s been super useful in seeing when we might go over our savings plan — and helping us cover that with flexible savings so we don’t end up overspending on on-demand compute."

For WOMBO, cloud cost optimization was about removing friction from their ability to build. With North.Cloud in place, they simplified decisions, scaled with less guesswork, and gave their team the freedom to focus on what actually drives the company forward: product.

Here’s how that played out:

1. Infrastructure that adapts to the pace of AI

WOMBO’s workloads are built for experimentation and scale, but traditional savings plans weren’t. Their GPU usage changes rapidly depending on product demand, model runs, and user spikes. Forecasting that is nearly impossible.

With Arctic, North.Cloud’s proprietary liquid cloud commitment engine, WOMBO no longer has to guess. Arctic continuously monitors their usage across AWS, proactively reallocates underutilized commitments, and automatically adjusts in real time to cover compute spikes—without locking the team into rigid contracts.

This real-time flexibility gives WOMBO the freedom to scale infrastructure dynamically while keeping cloud spend under control.

“Our usage is super spiky, especially when we scale up GPU-heavy instances. North.Cloud helps us stay ahead of it. It sees when we’re about to go over our coverage and steps in to apply savings—so we’re not stuck paying expensive on-demand rates. It’s made a huge difference.”

2. Zero internal drag

Cloud savings didn’t require process changes, tooling migrations, or disruptions to team workflows. With North.Cloud running quietly in the background, WOMBO’s engineers stayed focused on product and user experience rather than infrastructure finance.

“The less time we spend thinking about infra and costs, the more time we get to focus on building. And that extra money stays on the balance sheet, helping us live a little longer and grow a little faster."

3. Savings that go deeper than expected

WOMBO saves $18,000 to $20,000 every month with North.Cloud—but it’s not just the headline number that matters. What stands out is how those savings are found.

Instead of relying on static dashboards or generic recommendations, North.Cloud proactively identifies cost anomalies, underused commitments, and even flags overlooked services that quietly drain spend.

“We were spending $1,800 a month on ElastiCache for years. North flagged it, cut it in half, and now we’ve got another $900 a month to use somewhere more useful.”

That kind of visibility and action adds up—giving WOMBO tighter control over their cloud costs and freeing up capital for long-term bets without bloated infra drag.

For WOMBO, North.Cloud isn’t a one-time optimization tool. It’s part of their long-term infrastructure strategy. 

As the team builds toward more complex models and scales up projects like w.ai, they’re leaning on North.Cloud to keep spend efficient and flexible—without distracting their engineers from product work.

“At this stage, any extra headspace we can get back is gold. North.Cloud just handles it, and I know it’s working when I look at the AWS bill.”

Talha mentioned that while he barely logs into the dashboard today, that’s exactly the point. The trust and automation built into North.Cloud means the team can focus on roadmap and growth, not procurement strategy.

As WOMBO ramps up hiring, expands compute usage, and invests their recent $9M fundraise into scaling w.ai, North.Cloud will remain in place to help manage volatility, unlock savings, and prevent the cloud bill from slowing them down.

“We’ll keep using North.Cloud as long as we’re running cloud workloads. It’s one of those things you don’t want to manage internally unless you absolutely have to—and with North.Cloud, we don’t.”