Clastix Receives Seed Investment to Help Enterprises Control and Scale Cloud Infrastructures
The investment will accelerate kMetal, Clastix's platform for running Kubernetes at scale with less hardware, lower operational overhead, and more predictable cost.
NAPLES, September 24, 2026 – Clastix today announced receipt of a €2.9 million seed investment from lead investor CDP Venture Capital Sgr, and co-investors Mistral and VERTIS SGR (“Vertis Venture 6 Digital Sud” fund, partially financed by the European Union’s Next-Generation EU). It is the first external funding in the company's history, and will be used to expand its team and accelerate the growth of its Kubernetes infrastructure platform.
The investment will support product development, customer success, solutions engineering, and go-to-market expansion as Clastix grows kMetal, its commercial platform for fleet-scale Kubernetes operations. Over the next three years, the company expects to grow its headcount to support increasing customer demand and build the capabilities needed to serve enterprise teams at larger scale. Clastix will also continue to invest in Kamaji, its open-source Hosted Control Plane engine.
“The next phase of AI won't be decided by models alone but by who controls the infrastructure layer beneath them,” said Adriano Pezzuto, co-founder and CEO of Clastix. “This funding goes toward building that layer for what's coming: expanding our R&D to better support AI-scale workloads, and growing our team to bring it into new markets as they build their AI infrastructure.”
As more enterprises run Kubernetes across multiple teams, environments, and workloads, the operational burden grows quickly. Clastix helps reduce that burden by eliminating what it calls the “control plane tax” – the dedicated machines and operational complexity traditionally required for each cluster. By moving control planes to shared infrastructure, Clastix helps platform teams lower overhead, simplify operations, and scale more predictably.
“The physical AI revolution is driving demand for infrastructure that is increasingly efficient, resilient, and scalable,” said Alessandro Scortecci, Chief Investment Officer for Direct Investments at CDP Venture Capital. “Clastix's highly innovative technological approach helps organizations manage large-scale Kubernetes environments much more effectively. We are proud to support a team that combines engineering excellence, market vision, and global ambition. This investment reflects CDP Venture Capital’s commitment to backing strategic technologies developed in Italy that can strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty and long-term competitiveness.”
Clastix's technology already runs in production with some of the most demanding infrastructure teams in Europe and North America, spanning AI labs, telecommunications, cloud services, and the public sector, giving the company a strong foundation as it expands its commercial and engineering teams.
“Clastix is the backbone of our Kubernetes infrastructure – their work on multi-tenancy and managed control planes helps us to enable our training and inference clusters at scale, with the efficiency that frontier AI demands,” said Timothée Lacroix, co-founder and CTO of Mistral. “By backing Clastix, we're investing in Europe's AI stack. A sovereign AI ecosystem isn't just about models – it's about the infrastructure layer that makes them run.”
Kamaji will remain open source and unchanged under the Apache 2.0 license, while kMetal will continue to evolve as the commercial platform for fleet management, governance, and production operations.
“Clastix is exactly the kind of deep infrastructure company we want to back through Vertis Venture 6 Digital Sud," said Renato Vannucci, Partner and Vice President of Vertis SGR. "The team's technical rigor, and its ability to already serve customers of the caliber of NVIDIA and Mistral, confirm the quality of the project. We're proud to support Clastix as it scales its platform into new markets, strengthening Europe's AI infrastructure layer from Southern Italy."
Organisations that are interested in moving to a hyperscaler-grade Kubernetes experience – or in delivering such to their customers – can learn more at clastix.io
About Clastix
Clastix builds infrastructure software that helps enterprises run Kubernetes more efficiently at scale. Its open-source project, Kamaji, provides the foundation for hosted control planes, while kMetal extends that foundation with commercial capabilities for fleet-scale operations. Trusted by organisations that include Fastweb, NVIDIA, and Mistral, Clastix is focused on helping platform teams reduce infrastructure overhead, simplify operations, and support business growth with less complexity.
About CDP Venture Capital
CDP Venture Capital is an asset management company (70% owned by CDP Equity and 30% owned by Invitalia) created to accelerate the growth of the Italian Venture Capital ecosystem and make it a cornerstone of the country's economic development and innovation. The company manages multiple funds dedicated to supporting innovation across strategic sectors including AI & Cybersecurity, Agrifoodtech, Spacetech, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Cleantech, Industrytech, and Infratech & Mobility.
About Mistral
Mistral is a global pioneer in frontier, open-weight artificial intelligence. The company provides enterprise-grade infrastructure and specialized, sovereign intelligence designed to give organizations and governments full control over their models, data governance, and compute capacity. Operating internationally across more than 20 countries, Mistral powers mission-critical AI transformations for leading global enterprises.
About Vertis SGR
Vertis is an independent asset management company based in Naples and Milan, managing nine closed-end funds reserved for qualified investors, investing in start-ups, scale-ups, and SMEs. Two funds are dedicated to private equity, while seven focus on venture Capital. Vertis Venture 6 Digital Sud represents the VC fund that invested in Clastix and supports the growth of innovative companies in Southern Italy at every stage of development, from seed to scale-up, backing businesses that introduce product or process innovation based on digital technologies. Among VV6's key investments are TimeFlow, Tuidi, Xbooks, Titan4, Quido, Health Triage, and Comestai.
Press Contact
Jason Mashak, CLASTIX Head of Marketing
jason@clastix.io