Packet

Packet (Packet Host, Inc.) was founded in 2014 in New York City by Zachary Smith, his brother Jacob Smith, and Aaron Welch. Its insight was that not every workload belongs on virtualized, multi-tenant public cloud: many performance-sensitive and infrastructure workloads run better on dedicated physical hardware. Packet built a platform that provisioned single-tenant bare-metal servers on demand, with the API-driven automation, per-hour billing, and self-service feel developers expected from AWS, but on raw, unshared machines. It offered an unusually diverse hardware menu, including Intel, AMD, and Arm processors plus select Nvidia GPUs in custom configurations.

As interest in low-latency and edge computing grew, Packet expanded its footprint to dozens of locations worldwide, positioning bare metal as the foundation layer for edge deployments, content delivery, and infrastructure software that needed to sit close to users. The company raised roughly $36M from investors including SoftBank Group, Dell Technologies Capital, and Third Point Ventures. It earned a strong reputation among infrastructure engineers as the leading independent bare-metal automation platform and a credible alternative to the hyperscalers for workloads that the big clouds served poorly.