Case Study: Upstart reduces cloud costs by $20M with CloudZero

How Upstart Used CloudZero To Help Reduce Cloud Costs By $20M

Upstart, the AI lending marketplace, needed a way to reduce cloud spending amid a tighter economic environment. With cloud costs spread across AWS and other providers, the team lacked a single pane of glass for visibility, engineering cost accountability, and a strong FinOps partnership. Upstart turned to CloudZero to address these challenges, with a focus on cost allocation, multi-cloud visibility, and shift-left cost management.

CloudZero ingested and allocated Upstart’s cloud costs, helped prioritize visibility for AWS and Red Hat OpenShift on AWS, and enabled custom reporting and unit cost analysis. As a result, Upstart reduced annual cloud spend by $20M, saved 5 hours per month on financial reporting, and shifted cost accountability left across engineering teams. CloudZero also helped Upstart calculate core unit metrics like cost per product and cost per organization, improving both optimization and financial control.

Upstart

Chris Gray

Principal Engineer