By ByteBot
Infracost, a developer-centric FinOps platform that integrates cloud cost estimation directly into code reviews, raised $15 million Series A in November 2025. Pruven Capital led the round with participation from Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, and other tier-1 investors. The funding validates what 62% of developers have been asking for: visibility into cloud costs before deployment, not after the monthly bill arrives. Over 3,500 companies, including 10% of the Fortune 500, already use Infracost to catch wasteful infrastructure changes during pull requests.
This isn’t just another FinOps tool. It’s a fundamental shift in when cost decisions happen. Traditional FinOps teams analyze billing data weeks after resources are deployed. Infracost shows developers the cost impact while they’re writing infrastructure code—the “Shift FinOps Left” approach. With enterprise cloud infrastructure projected to waste $44.5 billion in 2025, this proactive model is gaining traction fast.
The $44.5 Billion Disconnect
The cloud waste problem boils down to a simple gap: FinOps teams control cost dashboards, but developers provision the actual resources. 52% of engineering leaders cite this disconnect as the primary cause of waste, according to Harness’s “FinOps in Focus 2025” survey of 700 developers and engineering leaders.
The numbers are stark. It takes an average of 31 days to identify and eliminate cloud waste. Only 30% of organizations know exactly where their cloud budget is going. Worse, fewer than half of developers have access to real-time data on idle resources (43%), unused resources (39%), or over-provisioned workloads (33%). When 55% of purchasing commitments are based on “guesswork,” billions in waste is inevitable.
The traditional workflow is backwards: Deploy resources, wait for the monthly bill, analyze the damage, then go back and fix it. By the time FinOps teams flag over-provisioned instances or orphaned storage, those resources have been burning cash for weeks. “Infracost provides the cloud checkout screen we’ve never had before,” says Sudip Chakrabarti, Pruven Capital Partner who joined Infracost’s board. “It enables developers to see the real-time cost impacts of their infrastructure decisions while also suggesting preventive optimizations.”
Related: Cloud Waste Crisis: $44.5B Lost, 78% Can’t Measure ROI
From Billing Analysis to Code Review
Infracost flips the timeline. Instead of analyzing costs post-deployment from billing APIs, it integrates with Infrastructure as Code tools—Terraform, Pulumi, OpenTofu—to show cost impacts in pull requests before code merges.
The process is straightforward. When a developer creates a PR proposing infrastructure changes, Infracost automatically parses the IaC configuration locally (no cloud credentials sent to external APIs), compares it against the current state, and pulls the latest pricing from its database of 4 million+ prices across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Within seconds, a comment appears on the PR showing the monthly cost delta, broken down by resource. Upgrading an RDS instance? The PR shows the $800/month increase. Adding S3 storage? You’ll see the cost before clicking merge.
Two new features accelerate this further. AutoFix, powered by AI, scans infrastructure code and automatically creates pull requests with cost optimizations—changing over-provisioned instances, removing unused resources. Issue Explorer scans existing IaC to surface savings opportunities right now, not just in new code. These aren’t theoretical tools: they reduce fix time from “hours to days” post-deployment to “minutes to seconds” during code review.
The contrast with traditional FinOps is stark. Traditional approach: Code → Deploy → Bill (31 days later) → Analyze → Fix → Redeploy. Infracost approach: Code → PR Review (cost breakdown in minutes) → Fix before merge → Deploy. The waste never reaches production.
Developers Want Cost Control—Infracost Delivers
The market validation is clear. 62% of developers surveyed said they want more control over, and responsibility for, managing cloud infrastructure costs. Yet only 35% cite cloud cost efficiency as a key measure of success today. That gap—the desire for control without the tools to act on it—is what Infracost addresses.
Adoption proves the demand. Since founding in 2021, Infracost has reached 3,500+ companies with 10% penetration into the Fortune 500. The $15M Series A from Pruven Capital, Y Combinator, and Sequoia Capital validates the category: developer-centric FinOps tools that integrate into engineering workflows, not just finance dashboards.
The funding will accelerate product development on AutoFix and Issue Explorer, features designed to make cost optimization effortless. But the bigger signal is this: traditional FinOps vendors focused on post-deployment analysis may need to adapt. When developers can see costs in real-time within GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps—the tools they already use—why wait for monthly reports from a separate FinOps platform?
Is “Shift FinOps Left” the Answer?
Here’s the question Infracost’s success raises: Is giving developers cost visibility the right solution, or is it just moving the burden?
Proponents argue that visibility creates accountability. “Once engineers start seeing costs at the code level, they develop a ‘cost muscle’ and begin making better decisions from the start,” according to FinOps best practices. When cost issues are flagged during pull requests, engineers fix them before deployment—no rollback costs, no waste. Developers already own security, performance, and reliability in code reviews. Why not costs?
The counter-argument: cognitive load. Developers already juggle architecture decisions, performance optimization, security vulnerabilities, code quality, and tight deadlines. Adding cloud cost optimization to that list isn’t empowerment—it’s another responsibility. Should we really expect developers to become FinOps experts on top of everything else?
There’s a middle path the industry isn’t discussing enough: FinOps teams embedding within engineering workflows, not developers taking on FinOps responsibilities. Instead of developers shouldering cost optimization alone, what if FinOps engineers reviewed PRs alongside code reviewers, using tools like Infracost to guide conversations? The tool enables visibility, but ownership doesn’t have to shift entirely to developers.
Key Takeaways
Infracost’s $15M Series A signals several broader trends:
- Developer-centric FinOps tools that integrate into engineering workflows (GitHub, GitLab, VS Code) are gaining traction over traditional post-deployment analysis platforms
- “Shift Left” is expanding from security (DevSecOps) to costs—prevent problems before they reach production, don’t just detect them faster
- 62% of developers want cost control, creating a market opportunity for tools that provide visibility without overwhelming teams
- Cloud waste ($44.5B in 2025) requires proactive prevention, not reactive dashboards—the 31-day detection lag is too slow when infrastructure scales daily
- Traditional FinOps vendors may need to meet developers where they work: in pull requests, not billing reports
The debate over developer cost ownership isn’t settled. But the funding makes one thing clear: the old model—FinOps teams analyzing bills weeks after deployment—isn’t working. Whether the solution is developers owning costs, FinOps teams shifting left, or a hybrid approach, tools like Infracost that provide real-time visibility during code review are becoming table stakes.
