Fluidstack helped Poolside deploy 2,000 GPUS within 48 hours

In 2023, Jason Warner and Eiso Kant founded Poolside: a platform that empowers software engineers to securely develop with AI. With over $600M in funding, Poolside deploys AI systems from within a developer’s infrastructure. No data or code leaves their customers’ security boundaries.

In Jason Warner’s own words, Poolside is building a future-proof AI workflow for software engineers:

“Our vision for the future is one where developers can build software with AI as an intuitive, secure, and flexible collaborator.” - Jason Warner, Poolside CEO

Poolside is a complex product; it combines a foundation model, an API, and a pre-built assistant tailored for enterprise software engineering. Their platform is designed for finance, defense, and retail companies, alongside any other vertical that has strict security and compliance needs.

Given their enterprise-focus, Poolside needed a partner that could reliably deliver a secure architecture. However, because Poolside is a rapidly growing startup, it also required an infrastructure that was available at a flexible and economical price. These requirements and constraints made Fluidstack the ideal partner.

The Challenge: Slow, Expensive, and Inflexible Options

Poolside had two competing goals.

The first was a hardware requirement. Poolside needed high-performance GPUs with InfiniBand interconnect. The second was agility; because Poolside is a fast-moving company, it required flexible and immediate access to compute resources.

Unfortunately, the mainstream market was riddled with compromises. For high-performance GPUs, the lead times from legacy players would extend into 3+ months. Additionally, these contracts were pegged to 3-year commitments at high rates. Worse, they featured old-fashioned support channels that weren’t able to support customers on AI workloads.

Instead of using a legacy player, Poolside decided to partner with Fluidstack to efficiently deploy a powerful and economically-priced stack.

The Solution: Fluidstack

Just days after signing with Fluidstack, Poolside had access to a enterprise-grade GPU stack with over 2,500+ units. This cluster of A100s and H100s shipped with some noteworthy benefits: fantastic support, agile deployment, and attractive pricing.

Support: 24/7 Coverage

Because of Fluidstack’s global engineering team, Poolside enjoyed 24/7 support via Slack. Practically speaking, Fluidstack became an extension to Poolside’s engineering team, providing support pre- and post-deployment.

“Fluidstack’s dedicated support is excellent.” - Jason Warner, Poolside CEO

Fluidstack’s engineers shared insights into the GPU cloud market, including the NVIDIA product roadmap. They studied Poolside’s workloads and recommended appropriate cluster specifications. Once the cluster was live, Fluidstack’s engineers supported around the clock to maintain and tune Poolside’s workloads for peak performance.

Fluidstack’s support-first philosophy empowered Poolside to optimize their compute strategy, reducing costs and time-to-market.

Speed: 2,560 GPUs deployed within two days

Traditional hyperscalers require a 3-month wait time; Fluidstack, meanwhile, offers a gold-standard 1-week lead time for multi-thousand GPU clusters. For Poolside, it was a matter of days: 2,560 GPUs were available just 48 hours after contract-signing.

“Operationally, the pace at which the team moves is unprecedented – this led to the fastest lead times and support from any of the partners we worked with.” - Margarida Garcia, VP Operations of Poolside

Because of the near-instant availability, Poolside was able to ship their first model to production several weeks ahead of schedule.

“From a business perspective, Fluidstack allowed us to start training our models earlier than expected with a level of flexibility others couldn’t offer.” - Margarida Garcia, VP Operations of Poolside

In short, by ensuring immediate access to high-performance and secure infrastructure, Fluidstack empowered Poolside to iterate on model development without delay.

Pricing: All-Inclusive & Cost-Effective

Fluidstack’s pricing model was a game-changer for Poolside. Fluidstack’s pricing bundled:

• 24/7 engineering support with 15-minute response times on Slack
• 99% uptime SLA at both node and InfiniBand networking levels
• Fully-managed Slurm or Kubernetes, including setup, maintenance, and frequent upgrades
• Proactive monitoring of all cluster components.

Fluidstack’s pricing was both market-competitive and transparent. For a predictable budget, Poolside could run large AI workloads.

Impact: Faster Market Entry, Continuous Model Optimization, and Cost Management

Poolside is able to attribute certain highlights of its early success to the Fluidstack partnership

• Accelerated Market Entry: With Fluidstack’s prompt lead time, Poolside was able to deploy its MVP ahead of schedule
• Enhanced Model Optimization: Poolside could scale its GPU cluster with ease, enabling fast iterations to improve the model’s accuracy
• Cost-Savings: Fluidstack’s transparent pricing provided Poolside with flexibility and immediate savings, allowing it to scale-up without financial headaches.

Because of Fluidstack, Poolside was able to place its focus on its product: next-generation AI for software engineering.

Closing Thoughts

Poolside’s experience with Fluidstack underscores that a powerful, secure GPU cluster shouldn’t come at the price of slow lead times, expensive costs, and poor support.

“One of the most important aspects of running an AI company is access to compute. We all know that large-scale clusters are difficult to operate, but Fluidstack has been exceptional.” - Jason Warner, Poolside CEO

In addition to Poolside, Fluidstack works with top AI labs, building 10k+ clusters for the world’s leading AI companies. If you want to discuss your GPU needs, click here to speak with our engineers.