Cloudforce, a Maryland-based AI infrastructure company, has closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Owl Ventures, the world’s largest EdTech-focused venture capital firm, with strategic participation from M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, underscoring strong backing for Cloudforce’s flagship platform, nebulaONE®. nebulaONE, built exclusively on Microsoft Azure, now supports more than 3 million users across 90 institutions globally, including the University of Oxford, UCLA and London Business School, and enables organizations to deploy top AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and others securely in their own cloud environments, addressing data sovereignty, privacy compliance (FERPA, HIPAA, GDPR) and cost challenges that have hindered AI adoption in regulated sectors. The funding will accelerate nebulaONE’s global expansion, support scaling in healthcare following recent HIPAA certification and first customers, and extend into the broader public sector, while ramping hiring in 2026 and launching new vertical-specific AI agents for education and healthcare. “We’re interested in the way nebulaONE brings together accessibility, security, and flexibility for users,” said Alwyn Collinson, Head of the AI Competency Centre at the University of Oxford. “At Oxford, we see AI not as a tool of the future but as a capability that needs to be deployed responsibly in the present.”
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At Cloudforce, Founder & CEO Husein Sharaf emphasized the company’s mission to democratize access to powerful AI, stating: “At Cloudforce, we believe the latest and most capable AI models shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for the few who can afford hundreds a month in subscriptions, or are otherwise willing to trade away their private data for access. With the support of Owl Ventures and M12, Microsoft’s Venture fund, we are aggressively expanding our footprint to ensure that institutions whether in London, Los Angeles, or Auckland—can rapidly deploy a private AI environment that empowers their people with equitable access to every AI model, without compromising their data.” Lyman Missimer, Investor at Owl Ventures, added that Cloudforce has “cracked the code on scaling AI infrastructure in a way that satisfies the rigorous security demands of top-tier universities while delivering a user experience that students and faculty love.” Microsoft’s investment via M12 also builds on Cloudforce’s recognition as Microsoft’s 2025 Education Partner of the Year, reinforcing the company’s role in driving responsible AI adoption across education, healthcare and public sector organizations worldwide.
