Fermyon Joins Akamai
Matt Butcher
fermyon
akamai
On behalf of Radu and the rest of the Fermyon team, I am super thrilled to announce that Fermyon is now part of Akamai Technologies. We feel that Fermyon’s vision of building the next generation of serverless computing slots perfectly into Akamai’s own vision for the future of edge technology. And we are looking forward to continuing our mission while also exploring the new opportunities opened through Akamai. Not only will we continue to evolve the edge platform we’ve built with Akamai, but we will continue to maintain and contribute to the open source projects we are so proud of, including Spin and Wasmtime.
A Look Back
In late 2021, we launched Fermyon with a clear vision: Pioneer the next wave of cloud computing. We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of virtual machines and containers, and concluded that there was a need for a specialized runtime for serverless functions. This runtime would need ultra-fast cold start times, support for a broad range of languages and frameworks, and a robust and battle-tested security sandbox. WebAssembly offered exactly that set of features.
Three months later, we launched Spin, the developer tool for creating serverless functions. Over time, Spin matured in features and capabilities. A community grew. And people began asking us how to use these apps in production. We turned our attention toward the second part of the equation: Deploying and operating WebAssembly serverless applications. We built Fermyon Cloud, and then worked together with industry leaders like SUSE, Microsoft and Liquid Reply to create SpinKube, a runtime for Kubernetes.
All the while, we were focused on compute speed. We brought cold start time down to under one millisecond. We utilized AOT compiling to improve overall execution speed. And we built a new fast JavaScript SDK based on the venerable SpiderMonkey engine from Mozilla.
But a realization struck: Regardless of how fast we could execute serverless functions, none of this would matter if the network was slow. This drew us from thinking about datacenters to thinking about the edge. There was no way in which we, a small startup company, could possibly construct our own edge. So if we wanted to deliver on the promise of ultra-fast serverless functions, we would need to find a partner.
In the edge ecosystem, Akamai stands apart. Akamai Cloud (once Linode) provides the level of IaaS we needed. Akamai’s global network is second to none. And their deep catalog of existing products, ranging from bot detection to CDN to object storage to AI, meant that we could integrate with their solutions and provide customers with a robust toolbox for building edge native applications.
Together with Akamai, we launched Fermyon Wasm Functions in March of this year. And we are proud to say that it has taken root. From streaming media to classic e-commerce to emerging AI, our new customer base covers multiple verticals. But they are united in their need for high-performance edge computing. We have found the nexus of next-gen serverless and edge native computing.
As Akamai and Fermyon looked toward the future of this relationship, we agreed that we could do so much more together than we could apart. Today we are so excited to celebrate Fermyon’s acquisition by Akamai.
Anticipating the Future
We see so many potential areas of growth. In the last several months, Akamai has rolled out several fantastic products. Managed Container Services provides a route to push Fermyon functions all the way to more than 4,000 points of presence in Akamai’s network. Inference Cloud can combine with Wasm functions to enable developers to rapidly build and deploy AI inferencing edge applications. And the ever-evolving capabilities of Akamai Cloud will provide deep integration across a continuum of computing. We will be exploring each of these in the months to come.
We will also continue our contributions upstream to the Spin Framework (which includes SpinKube) and the Wasmtime ecosystem. This, of course, means that we will continue to participate in CNCF and Bytecode Alliance, joining the many other Akamai folks who already participate upstream. On the specification side, we’ll continue to work on WASI 1.0 and the Wasm Component Model. Fermyon and Akamai share a commitment to open source and open standards.
Most excitingly, we intend to continue to work with our existing customers and users as we do what we’ve done since we started Fermyon: Pioneer the next wave (or perhaps waves) of cloud computing.
Thank You for the Journey So Far
From Discord to conferences to meetups and beyond, we have formed so many profound relationships over these last four years. Thank you for being there. Thank you for exploring with us. Thank you for your code contributions, your doc fixes, your helpful chat comments, and your frequent feedback. Thank you for your guest blog posts, for talking about Spin at conferences, and for participating in CNCF and Bytecode Alliance. We’re looking forward to continuing the journey with you.
I have gained notoriety for opening meetings with, “Hello, Fermyon friends.” It seems fitting to conclude this post not with a goodbye, but with a new greeting: Hello, Akamai friends!
Matt Butcher
Co-founder and CEO of Fermyon