Thoras helps companies achieve reliability without overspending on cloud costs

Over the years, twin sisters Nilo Rahmani and Jen Rahmani have shared stories about the pain points they faced in their engineering careers.

Nilo told TechCrunch that a frequent topic of conversation was frustrations with the reliability platforms they used at work. When they saw the reliability landscape start to change a few years ago, they thought they had the perfect expertise to create the right reliability solution for where the industry was headed.

Nilo told TechCrunch that “first it was reliability at all costs.” “Now (companies) are paying more attention to cloud spending. The entire industry suffers from these costs, and the problem grows exponentially as businesses grow.”

The Rahmani sisters decided to launch Thoras to find a happy medium that allows companies to find reliability without consuming too many cloud resources. The Washington, D.C.-based company uses artificial intelligence to help engineers quickly find and diagnose the root cause of software crashes. Thoras also helps enterprises discover optimization opportunities within reliability to save on cloud costs.

Thoras claims it can help companies find and fix problems 70% faster than other methods, while saving up to 60% on cloud costs.

CEO Nilo said the platform is designed to predict demand fluctuations, so companies can more effectively prepare for potential reliability disruptions and deploy appropriate cloud resources in advance.

Cloud monitoring already includes a number of players, including New Relic, Splunk and Dynatrace. The category also looks poised to grow with the advancement of AI. Linux and cloud infrastructure company SUSE has announced a new cloud observation tool In November 2024.

Nilo said he thinks Toras’ approach to artificial intelligence is compelling. Although Thoras touched on machine learning technology, he said the company’s software is not overused in large language models. Instead, Thoras favors smaller models with clearer ROI. He added that many of their competitors build around these LLMs, which are not always accurate and can result in the company over-consuming resources.

Thoras went private in January 2024 and raised a round before a $1.5 million splash in March 2024. The company has seen its revenue grow 360% in the past nine months. Now, the company is announcing new funding it’s raising to match customer demand.

The startup raised $5 million in a seed round led by Wellington Ventures with participation from Sinewave Ventures, Focal Ventures and Storytime Capital, among other investors. The company plans to use the capital to hire engineers, develop the product and meet demand.

“This round was smoother sailing,” Nilo said, comparing it to the company’s pre-seed round. “We had product-market fit and scale that proved we understood what we needed to do to get to the next level.”

Thoras has intentionally focused on Kubernetes environments, but Nilo said some of the future product expansion will extend to other cloud software as well.

The COO told TechCrunch that he and Nilo never thought they’d start a company together—neither did their immigrant parents, who were surprised they were interested in giving up the security of full-time jobs they had provided. But Jen described her and Nilo as a “power duo” who use their bond as twins to better solve problems.

“At first (our parents) were confused and upset with us,” Nilo said. “They have always believed in us. Now they enjoy seeing what we do.”