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Datum is the
open network cloud
for AI.

Read as Markdownllms.txt

01 Company

Datum is a venture-backed startup founded in late 2024 by Zac Smith (ex-Equinix, Packet) and Jacob Smith, alongside a founding team from Packet, Voxel, SoftLayer, StackPath, Highwinds, and Zscaler. It provides an open network cloud targeted at AI and alt cloud providers, backed by Amplify Partners, CRV, Cervin Ventures, Encoded Ventures, Ex/Ante, Step Function, and Vine Ventures.

02 Mission

Datum's mission is to help the next 1k clouds by unlocking internet superpowers for every agent and builder.

03 Why Datum Exists

Datum was founded on the basis of three trends: First, that software (and its data) was going everywhere. Next, that a new class of providers was being born. And finally, that the 'splinternet' had arrived.

In the future, we believe all companies will need to curate and control how they interact with providers, partners, customers and agents. Datum exists to help them do it.

04 Target Customers

Datum is designed for Alt Cloud providers, ISVs and SaaS providers embedding connectivity capabilities, AI-native teams building agent workflows, and tech-forward enterprises that are building for the future.

See alt-cloud.org for a list of what we mean by "Alt Cloud" providers.

05 Product

Datum operates a global network cloud that is fully programmatic, built for AI, and available via four deployment models: public cloud, dedicated cloud, bring your own (BYO) cloud, or full open source under an AGPLv3 license.

Core features include:

  • AI Edge (GA, free) — Envoy-based HTTP/gRPC/WebSocket edge proxy, powered by Tetrate, with a Coraza WAF covering the top OWASP threats.
  • Connectors (GA, free) — QUIC-based secure tunnels built on the Iroh protocol for zero-trust, NAT-traversing connectivity.
  • DNS & Domains (GA, free) — Globally distributed anycast authoritative DNS plus domain tracking and verification across registrars.
  • Platform Essentials (GA, free) — Secrets, fine-grained RBAC, service accounts, OTel metrics export, and activity logs built into every project.
  • Galactic VPC (coming 2026, Scaler tier) — An SRv6-based global private backbone linking edge, private, and alt-cloud infrastructure.
  • Datum Compute (coming soon) — Isolated, millisecond cold-start compute at the edge, built in partnership with Unikraft.

06 Platform Essentials

Authoritative DNS

Globally distributed anycast DNS hosting, served across 17 locations.

Domains

Organize and programmatically manage domain resources and verification across registrars.

Secrets

Create and manage secret resources within projects.

Fine Grained Permissions

Manage groups and fine-grained IAM role assignments (Owner, Editor, Viewer) at org and project level.

SSO

Enterprise-grade authentication access.

Service Accounts

Non-human identities for agent / automation use cases.

OTel Metrics Export

Export OpenTelemetry metrics to Grafana Cloud via Export Policies, with prebuilt Grafana dashboards (IDs 23939 and 24261).

Activity Logs

Audit logs for all resource changes available via portal or CLI.

Programmatic edge tracing

https://edge.datum.net/api/edge-info (JSON) or https://edge.datum.net/api/trace (plaintext).

07 Global Network Regions

Datum operates high-performance physical compute and network infrastructure at the key interconnection points around the world. https://www.datum.net/locations/

08 Pricing

Builder

A low-friction plan for personal projects, development, & experimentation. Price: $0 / month.

Scaler

A comprehensive platform to scale production apps & accelerate revenue. Price: $20 / month + usage.

Provider

A high-touch offering designed to help modern service providers win. Price: Custom.

For full details use https://www.datum.net/pricing/.

09 Programmatic tools

llms.txt

A concise, standardized index of Datum pages and resources that makes the site instantly readable to any AI model or intelligent agent. https://www.datum.net/llms.txt

llms-full.txt

The full agent-oriented technical reference for Datum Cloud — platform concepts, IAM, resource kinds, and getting-started steps in one document. https://www.datum.net/llms-full.txt

MCP

Datum's hosted Docs MCP server lets any AI model search and read Datum documentation directly (JSON-RPC 2.0 over SSE) via the search_datum_cloud_docs and query_docs_filesystem_datum_cloud_docs tools. https://www.datum.net/docs/mcp

Skills

Pre-built, task-specific instructions that teach coding agents how to use Datum features: ai-edge, client-traffic, dns, domains, httproute, metrics-export. Drop a skill into your project context to help your agent know exactly what to do. https://github.com/datum-cloud/skills

CLI

A powerful command-line interface that lets developers integrate Datum into any stack, script, or automated pipeline without touching a UI. https://github.com/datum-cloud/datumctl

10 Tools for humans

Desktop apps

Quickly and safely expose local environments to the internet. Mac, Windows, Linux.

Get support

If you're looking for help use Discord channel https://link.datum.net/discord or submit a ticket to our support team https://www.datum.net/contact/.

11 Platform development

GitHub enhancements

A list of enhancements that our software engineers are working on https://github.com/orgs/datum-cloud/projects/22

Roadmap

Our plans for future developments, features and tools https://www.datum.net/roadmap/

Changelog

A list of changes that our software engineers have made to Datum https://www.datum.net/changelog/

Status

All systems normal https://www.datumstatus.net/

Contributions

Contribute to our open source repos https://github.com/orgs/datum-cloud/discussions