Adaptive6 Emerges: Tackling Cloud Waste with a Cybersecurity Mindset

The whirlwind of generative AI is transforming how we build software, making development cycles faster than ever. But as enterprises embrace AI-powered coding assistants, a critical and often overlooked issue looms large: the escalating cost of cloud infrastructure. While the promise of AI is immense, the reality is that a significant portion of cloud spend – up to 32% according to Flexera – can be attributed to sheer waste. Enter Adaptive6, a new player emerging from stealth with a novel approach to combat this pervasive problem.

From Financial Glitches to Engineering Fixes

For too long, managing cloud costs has been a financial exercise. Teams focused on visibility dashboards and budgeting, but often lacked the technical insight to truly address the root causes of waste. Adaptive6, co-founded by Aviv Revach, who brings a formidable background in cybersecurity from his time with Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 8200, argues that cloud waste isn't just a financial discrepancy; it's an engineering vulnerability.

“We realized this is not a financial problem; it’s an engineering problem,” Revach shared in a recent interview. “We drew on our background in cybersecurity, where to find vulnerabilities, you scan the cloud, identify the issues, map them back to the relevant code, find the responsible developer or engineer, and remediate.” This cybersecurity playbook is precisely what Adaptive6 aims to apply to cloud cost optimization.

Hunting for "Shadow Waste"

Adaptive6’s platform, dubbed Cloud Cost Governance and Optimization (CCGO), goes beyond simply identifying idle servers. It’s designed to uncover what they call "Shadow Waste" – the hidden inefficiencies lurking within application workloads and complex cloud architectures that traditional tools often miss.

Key aspects of Adaptive6's technology include:

• Agentless Operation: The platform utilizes standard cloud APIs for read-only access, minimizing operational overhead.
• Cross-Cloud Scanning: It scans across major cloud providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as PaaS layers such as Databricks and Snowflake, and even Kubernetes clusters.
• "Cloud to Code" Mapping: This unique capability links cloud resources with the specific lines of code responsible for their creation, enabling precise identification of the issue and the responsible engineer.
• Workflow Integration: Fixes are delivered directly into developer workflows via tools like Jira, Slack, and ServiceNow, making remediation seamless.

Beyond the Obvious: Tackling Nuanced Inefficiencies

Adaptive6’s approach digs deeper than surface-level optimizations. For instance, it analyzes the complexities of provisioned throughput for AI workloads on AWS, helping engineers strike the delicate balance between performance and cost. It also addresses application-level inefficiencies, such as the impact of using outdated programming language versions (like an older Python version versus the more efficient 3.12).

The AI Paradox: Friend and Foe

Interestingly, while Adaptive6 leverages AI for generating remediation scripts, Revach cautions against relying solely on AI coding agents. He points out that AI-generated code can itself be a source of inefficiency if not trained with cost optimization in mind.

Adaptive6’s strength lies in its team of expert researchers, who apply the same rigor used in cybersecurity vulnerability research to identify cost inefficiencies. This ensures a deep, technical understanding rather than a purely algorithmic approach.

Real-World Impact and Future Prevention

The impact is already being felt. Major enterprises like Ticketmaster, Bayer, and Norstella are already using Adaptive6, reporting significant reductions in cloud spend, often between 15-35%. In some cases, a single misconfiguration fix has led to savings exceeding a million dollars.

Looking ahead, Adaptive6 is integrating "shift left" capabilities directly into CI/CD pipelines. This proactive approach scans code for cost inefficiencies *before* deployment, acting as a safeguard against future costly mistakes. The company’s vision is clear: cloud cost management is shifting from the finance department’s spreadsheets to the developer’s pull requests.

Adaptive6 is not just offering another cost-saving tool; it's ushering in a new era of engineering-led cloud governance, transforming how businesses approach and manage their cloud infrastructure.