There are two profiles defining alternative cloud companies today. One is the niche provider that focuses on a particular customer segment and emphasizes business stability. Niche players may avoid third-party funding and use of debt to maintain smaller but more steady growth. The second profile is the ambitious provider, defined by an intent to be the next AWS of the world. They take on both funding and debt, look to go public and push global expansion as rapidly as possible.

The last article in this series covering the alternative cloud focused on Linode, which is very much a niche player, showing an impressive 18 years of consecutive profitability, but perhaps at the cost of slower growth. This report looks at Wasabi, a cloud service provider in the early stages of global expansion. It has taken on US$275 million of funding since it launched in 2017 and will likely go public within the next two years. Wasabi has growth ambitions and is looking to commoditize cloud storage and compete directly with AWS.

Today there are orders of magnitude between the top hyperscalers and the alternative cloud providers. Wasabi, however, like many alternative players, is not currently concerned by the hyperscalers’ dominance due to the current market dynamics. In total, the market grew 36% in Q2 2021, up US$12.5 billion on last year. Cloud infrastructure services have been accelerating since the start of the pandemic, which has driven digital transformation and business resiliency planning across all industry verticals. Even though the top 10 cloud service providers account for 79% of this market, there is enough demand to fuel a much wider ecosystem of providers. If this momentum continues, the result is a playing field where alternative cloud players can differentiate and grow in the same space as the hyperscalers.