As AI Breaks the One-Size-Fits-All Data Stack, Yuki Raises $6M to Become the AI Data Control Layer
NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Yuki, a data cost optimization startup, has emerged from stealth with a $6 million seed round led by Hyperwise Ventures, with participation from VelocitX, Tal Ventures, Fresh.fund, and Yakir Daniel, founder of Spot.io (Flexera).
Today, most organizations respond to growing data and AI workloads by spending more on the same rigid infrastructure. This one-size-fits-all model forces teams with different SLAs, budgets, and performance needs onto identical compute resources, creating massive inefficiencies that compound as data volumes grow.
"After building Spot, it was easy for me to recognize the pain point Yuki is solving. They're building the control layer for data cost optimization just as AI is turning data spend into a board-level issue," said Yakir Daniel, co-founder of Spot.io (acquired by NetApp and now part of Flexera), who joined Yuki's seed round and gave his vote of confidence to the team.
At the core of the product is Yuki Fabric, an optimization AI model that acts as a unified control and automation layer across an organization's data infrastructure, including Snowflake, Google's BigQuery, and native support for Iceberg-based data lakes, positioning Yuki as a control layer for next-generation data architectures.
The model continuously learns workload behavior, SLAs, and cost-performance tradeoffs, and optimizes execution decisions in real time. Yuki's control layer sits above the vendors, preventing infrastructure and process duplication, reducing compute and operational costs, and enabling SLA enforcement across teams, products, and workloads.
As enterprises increasingly adopt Iceberg to decouple storage and compute, Yuki provides the missing intelligence layer that governs how workloads consume those resources.
"Data is the only resource in an organization that no one truly manages. We know how to store it, but not how to govern it. There are budgets, cloud infrastructure, and teams, but the data itself has no control system," says Ido Arieli Noga, CEO of Yuki. "For years, the default response to growth was to burn more money on the same one-size-fits-all infrastructure. That model is fundamentally broken, and it doesn't scale in an AI-driven world. Yuki was built to become the control layer that makes data infrastructure workload-aware and governed in real time. In the age of AI, this becomes even more critical. Teams are constantly running experiments, models, and new workloads, and many organizations are discovering they're paying enormous sums for data and compute resources that no one is using anymore, simply because no one took the time to manage and clean them up."
According to Noga, once data infrastructure becomes workload-aware and governed by an intelligent control layer, cost reduction becomes a natural outcome rather than a manual effort. As of 2025, customers using Yuki's platform have saved an average of about 42.6% on their data costs - savings that in large enterprises can reach millions of dollars.
Yuki is implemented through a simple and fast deployment process, with no need for changes to code or queries. Yuki's AI platform manages workloads and priorities in real time, clearly distinguishing between business-critical tasks and lower-priority internal processes. Based on the system's current state, Yuki routes each query to the most efficient compute resource available at that moment, reducing data costs in environments where data volumes and compute consumption continue to grow, largely driven by increased AI adoption.
Yuki's business model is based on customer success: the company charges a fee as a percentage of the actual savings generated. If no savings are created, the customer does not pay.
The cloud management tools market is estimated at approximately $9.8 billion and includes more than 200 vendors. It is expected to continue growing as data volumes surge and organizations shift toward unified data platforms. Companies must cope with fluctuating workloads, high query volumes, and dynamic compute costs, increasing the need for intelligent automation and real-time optimization.
Among Yuki's customers are cybersecurity companies such as Tenable, as well as data-heavy media companies such as Angel Studios. The platform is chosen by organizations with large-scale data and AI operations that want to reduce costs, streamline operations, and maintain tighter control over their data infrastructure.
Yuki was founded in 2025 by Ido Arieli Noga (CEO) and Amir Peres (CTO). The two have known each other since childhood and previously worked together on joint ventures, laying the foundation for their partnership. After a decade on separate professional paths, a chance meeting revealed that both were working in the data space. They decided to join forces and soon encountered a challenge common to many organizations: the inability to use data resources efficiently amid fluctuating workloads and a constant flood of queries. Their research showed that no true control plane existed for managing data itself, which led them to build Yuki.
Yuki employs 15 people, most of whom are based in Israel, with additional team members in the US and the UK. The funding will be used to expand the Israeli R&D center, deepen product capabilities, support additional data platforms, and accelerate growth in the US by expanding the sales organization.
About Yuki
Yuki is a real-time optimization platform for Snowflake, BigQuery, and Iceberg-based data lakes, automatically improving cost and performance by optimizing execution based on system behavior. Yuki is metadata-only by design and built for enterprise-grade governance, security, and predictable cost control.
About Hyperwise Ventures
Hyperwise Ventures is a venture capital firm, leading seed investments in the cybersecurity and enterprise software domains. It invests in brilliant entrepreneurs with ground-breaking technologies, and materially assists in accelerating the business execution of its portfolio companies. Existing investors in Hyperwise Ventures include financial institutions from the U.S., E.U., and Israel, together with an impressive list of global leaders in the cybersecurity and high-tech sectors.
Contact
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