内容来源：https://www.geekwire.com/2026/cloud-and-aws-cost-consultant-duckbill-expands-to-software-raises-7-75m-for-new-skyway-platform/

内容总结：

云成本咨询公司Duckbill获775万美元融资，转型推出成本预测平台Skyway

旧金山云成本咨询公司Duckbill于近日宣布完成775万美元融资，投资方包括Heavybit、Uncork Capital和Encoded Ventures。该公司正从咨询服务向软件产品转型，推出旨在帮助企业预测云支出的新平台Skyway。

Duckbill由云成本顾问科里·奎因与迈克·朱利安共同创立，长期为年云支出超1亿美元的大型企业提供成本优化咨询。公司客户包括Airtable、Ticketmaster等知名企业，平均年云基础设施支出达7000万美元。基于此经验，团队发现当前云成本管理（FinOps）领域过度聚焦"降低账单"，而企业真正的痛点在于"成本难以预测"。

"财务部门不会因云账单是100万还是1亿美元失眠，"奎因指出，"他们失眠是因为支出突然飙升30%却无人能解释原因。"朱利安补充道，现有成本管理工具多由初创公司为初创公司打造，无法满足大型企业复杂需求，许多客户最终不得不自建工具。

Skyway平台的首个模块"合同管理器"可将企业与云厂商的私有定价协议转化为结构化数据，验证折扣执行情况并预测支出。其长期愿景更超越亚马逊云科技（AWS），覆盖谷歌云、微软Azure乃至SaaS工具、AI服务及传统数据中心的全栈支出管理。

尽管云成本管理市场竞争激烈，朱利安认为Duckbill找到了差异化定位：专注于为基础设施构建财务规划与预测软件。他坦言转型将逐步侵蚀部分咨询业务，但参考ServiceNow等公司的成功路径，服务需求仍将长期存在。

值得注意的是，当前AI技术的普及正加剧云成本波动。投资方Heavybit合伙人约瑟夫·鲁西奥在公告中表示："AI基础设施可能进一步放大这种不确定性。"为此，Duckbill已聘请前AWS定价谈判专家吉姆·摩西担任超大规模云战略总监，并计划将团队从10人扩充至年底的20人。

这并非Duckbill首次尝试产品化。2022年的转型尝试被奎因称为"彻底失败"，他总结道："如果自以为了解客户需求却不与他们沟通，结果必将偏离方向。"此次新融资将用于加速产品研发，公司能否凭借对大型企业痛点的深刻理解，在红海市场中开辟新航道，值得持续关注。

中文翻译：

“我们筹了一大笔钱，正在开发一款产品。”周三上午，云成本顾问科里·奎恩以他标志性的冷面幽默宣布了这个消息。这位凭借犀利敢言的亚马逊云服务评论在播客和新闻通讯栏目中走红的专家，就此开启了职业生涯的第二篇章。

奎恩与迈克·朱利安联合创立的咨询公司Duckbill正进行一场高风险战略转型：蜕变为一家软件公司，推出名为Skyway的新平台，旨在帮助大型企业提升云支出的可预测性。

这家总部位于旧金山的公司宣布获得由Heavybit、Uncork Capital和Encoded Ventures投资的775万美元，以加速产品开发并扩充现有10人团队。

他们提出了颠覆性观点：当前被业界称为“云财务运营”（FinOps）的云成本管理领域过度执着于削减账单，而真正症结在于无人能预测下月成本。“财务部门不会因你的云账单是100万还是1亿美元失眠，”奎恩在新闻稿中表示，“但当支出骤增30%却无人能解释原因时，他们才会彻夜难眠。”

Duckbill首席执行官朱利安在采访中指出，公司逐渐认识到现有云成本管理工具大多由初创公司为同类企业打造。许多Duckbill的大型企业客户尝试过这些工具后选择弃用，最终不得不自行开发。“我推测当前FinOps领域的开发者多来自初创公司而非大型企业，他们甚至意识不到许多问题的存在。”

Duckbill的客户包括Airtable、Ticketmaster和New Relic等企业，其年均云基础设施支出达7000万美元（该公司咨询业务标语：“专为十亿美元俱乐部服务的云成本管理”），远超亚马逊云服务私人定价合约要求的100万美元年度最低消费门槛。朱利安表示，在这种规模下，企业才会开始遭遇中小公司未曾面临的模式与难题。

据称该公司已谈判达成数百亿美元的云服务合约，由此积累了独特洞察（其内部白板上写着：“我们的艰辛历程铸就了护城河”）。

Skyway的首个模块“合约管理器”能将私人定价协议转化为结构化数据，验证客户是否获得谈判约定的折扣，并进行支出预测。

其宏大愿景远不止于亚马逊云服务。Duckbill虽以亚马逊云平台专项服务起家，现已拓展至谷歌云和微软Azure。朱利安表示最终目标是整合企业所有软件与基础设施的支出数据，包括Datadog、Snowflake等SaaS工具，Anthropic、OpenAI等AI服务商，甚至包括仍使用自建主机的客户遗留数据中心。

朱利安承认向软件转型终将侵蚀部分咨询业务，但预计不会完全取代。他指出ServiceNow和CrowdStrike等公司在构建大型软件业务的同时仍保持可观服务收入，证明大型企业始终需要服务支持。

云成本管理技术市场竞争激烈且艰难。最新例证是斯波坎地区的初创公司Vega Cloud在融资数百万美元后已进入破产接管程序。但朱利安认为这并非单一市场：Point5等公司专注工作负载优化，Finout等企业专攻成本分摊。他将Duckbill定位为另辟蹊径——开发面向基础设施的财务规划与预测软件。

Duckbill目前尚未在产品中应用人工智能。了解奎恩对行业炒作反感的人对此不会感到意外。但通过将杂乱支出数据结构化，Skyway有望创造朱利安所称的“AI糖果”——可供客户在自有系统中使用的洁净标记化信息。

与此同时，人工智能正使云成本预测变得更加困难。“云支出已是企业最大且最不可预测的成本项目之一，”投资方Heavybit的普通合伙人约瑟夫·鲁西奥在融资公告中表示，“AI基础设施将加剧这种波动性。”

Duckbill现有10名员工，计划在本季度末增至15人，年底达20人，新增岗位以工程师为主。公司还聘请了曾任亚马逊云服务私人定价谈判代表的吉姆·摩西担任超大规模云战略总监，实质上将谈判对手方专家纳入团队。

这并非奎恩与朱利安首次尝试产品开发。2022年Duckbill曾试图从服务转向软件，奎恩在公司发布的视频讨论中坦承那是“惨痛的失败”：“事实证明，如果自以为了解客户需求却不与他们沟通，最终只会抵达意料之外的目的地。”

奎恩特别说明，除官网外，公众还可通过拨打833-AWS-BILL联系Duckbill。“他可不是在开玩笑。”朱利安补充道。

英文来源：

“We’ve raised a pile of money, and we’re building a product.”
That’s the characteristically deadpan announcement Wednesday morning from Corey Quinn, the cloud cost consultant who has built a second career, basically, on his sharp and irreverent takes on Amazon Web Services in his popular podcasts and newsletters.
Duckbill, the consulting firm that Quinn co-founded with Mike Julian, is making what amounts to a high-stakes pivot: transforming into a software company with a new platform called Skyway that aims to make cloud spending more predictable for large companies.
The company, based in San Francisco, announced $7.75 million in funding from Heavybit, Uncork Capital, and Encoded Ventures to accelerate product development and grow its 10-person team.
Their contrarian pitch: the cloud cost management sector, commonly known in the industry as FinOps, is fixated on making bills smaller, when the real problem is that nobody can predict what the costs will be next month.
“Finance doesn’t lose sleep over whether your cloud bill is $1 million or $100 million,” Quinn said in a news release. “They lose sleep when it jumps 30% and nobody can explain why.”
Julian, Duckbill’s CEO, said in an interview that the company came to realize that existing cloud cost management tools are built by startups, for startups, for the most part. Many of Duckbill’s large enterprise clients had tried those tools, rejected them, and ended up building their own.
“I have a hypothesis that the people building in FinOps today come from startups and not from enterprise, so they don’t even know many of the problems exist,” Julian said.
Duckbill’s clients, which include companies such as Airtable, Ticketmaster, and New Relic, spend $70 million a year on cloud infrastructure, on average. (Tagline for their consulting business: “Cloud cost management for the nine-figure club.”) That’s well above the $1 million annual minimum that AWS requires for a private pricing contract. At that scale, Julian said, you start to see patterns and problems that don’t exist for smaller companies.
All told, the company says it has negotiated tens of billions of dollars in cloud contracts, giving it unique insights. (“Our schlep is our moat,” reads one of its internal whiteboards.)
Skyway’s first module, called Contract Manager, converts private pricing deals into structured data, validating that customers are getting discounts they negotiated, and projecting spending.
The bigger vision extends well beyond AWS. Duckbill started with a specialization in Amazon’s cloud platform but has expanded into Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Julian said the ultimate goal is to structure spending data across every piece of software and infrastructure a company uses: SaaS tools like Datadog and Snowflake, AI providers like Anthropic and OpenAI, and even legacy data centers for customers still using their own mainframes.
Julian acknowledged that the pivot into software will eventually cannibalize a portion of Duckbill’s consulting business, but said he doesn’t expect it to disappear entirely. Big companies need services, he said, pointing to companies like ServiceNow and CrowdStrike that built major software businesses while maintaining significant services revenue.
The market for cloud cost management technology is crowded, and difficult. The latest casualty: Spokane-area startup Vega Cloud, which entered receivership after raising millions in financing.
But Julian contends that it’s not really one market. Companies like Point5 focus on workload optimization. Others like Finout specialize in cost allocation. He sees Duckbill as doing something different: building financial planning and forecasting software for infrastructure.
Duckbill isn’t using artificial intelligence in its own product yet. This will not surprise anyone familiar with Quinn’s aversion to industry hype. However, by bringing structure to messy spending data, Skyway is positioned to create what Julian calls “AI candy” — clean, labeled information that customers can put to use in their own systems.
At the same time, AI is making it harder to predict cloud costs.
“Cloud spend is already one of the largest and least predictable line items in the enterprise,” said Joseph Ruscio, general partner at Heavybit, one of the firms backing Duckbill’s pivot, in the press release announcing the funding. “AI infrastructure is about to compound that volatility.”
Duckbill currently has 10 employees and plans to grow to 15 by the end of the current quarter and 20 by year-end, with most of the new hires in engineering. The company also hired Jim Moses, who previously worked at AWS as a private pricing negotiator, as director of hyperscaler strategy, essentially putting someone from the other side of the table on their team.
It’s not the first time Quinn and Julian have tried to build a product. In 2022, Duckbill attempted to make the leap from services to software. It was an “abject failure,” as Quinn acknowledged in a video discussion with Julian, released by the company as part of the announcement.
“Turns out that if you just assume you know what customers want and don’t talk to them, you’re gonna go somewhere, but not where you wanted to go,” he said.
In addition to its website, Quinn noted, Duckbill can be reached at 833-AWS-BILL.
“He is not joking,” Julian said.