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Cloud-cost consultancy Duckbill announced on February 18, 2026, that it had raised $7.75 million from Heavybit, Uncork Capital and Encoded Ventures to develop Skyway, a platform intended to help large organizations forecast and govern cloud and AI infrastructure spending. Its first module, Contract Manager, is designed to connect private contract terms with consumption and invoices—a different emphasis from tools focused mainly on finding savings. The financing is an early vote for Duckbill’s thesis, not proof that Skyway’s forecasts or customer outcomes are established.
What Duckbill announced
Duckbill, founded by Mike Julian and Corey Quinn, is expanding from cloud-cost consulting into software with Skyway. The $7.75 million financing was announced on February 18, 2026, with participation from Heavybit, Uncork Capital and Encoded Ventures. Investor announcements describe it as a seed investment; GeekWire’s coverage reported the amount and investors without making a formal round label central to the story. No valuation, ownership details, revenue figures or term sheet were disclosed in the available reporting. GeekWire’s announcement coverage and Uncork’s investor post provide those accounts.
The company said the money would accelerate product development and support hiring. At the announcement, Duckbill had roughly 10 employees and outlined plans to reach about 15 by the end of that quarter and 20 by year-end, with most hires expected in engineering. Those were targets reported in February, not confirmation that the hires subsequently happened. The product’s initial module is Contract Manager, part of the broader Skyway platform.
Why Duckbill says cloud cost management needs a different focus
Many FinOps workflows are organized around reducing waste: finding idle resources, improving allocation, or recommending changes that lower usage charges. Duckbill argues that this is not enough for large enterprises whose cloud economics depend on negotiated discounts, credits, minimum commitments, pricing tiers and renewal conditions.
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The distinction is between asking, “How can we spend less?” and asking, “What will we spend under the terms we actually negotiated, and what explains the change?” Both questions matter. But when a company has a large multiyear commitment, a missed discount or an inaccurate renewal forecast can matter as much as a rightsizing opportunity.
- A negotiated discount may not be reflected on every eligible invoice line.
- A committed-spend agreement can underperform if usage grows more slowly than expected.
- Credits or pricing exceptions may be difficult to reconcile against billing records.
- Finance may see the total bill without a clear link to contracts, product growth or workload changes.
- Engineering and FinOps teams may understand usage while lacking procurement’s contract context.
- Fast-changing AI workloads can make existing budget assumptions less reliable.
Duckbill says some large customers tried existing tools and built internal systems instead. That is a founder’s account of customer experience, not a market-wide survey. The company’s broader argument is that contract information and consumption data often live in separate systems and spreadsheets, leaving teams to assemble a financial picture manually. Its position is set out in Duckbill’s explanation of its FinOps thesis.
What Skyway’s Contract Manager is intended to do
Contract Manager is designed to structure private cloud-pricing information and connect it to commitments, consumption and billing. Duckbill describes the module as a way to keep a record of commercial terms and use that context to assess performance, forecast spending and support renewal decisions.
- Record private rates, discount structures, commitment tiers and prepaid credits.
- Track commitment performance against actual consumption.
- Check whether negotiated discounts and credits appear in invoices.
- Surface possible invoice discrepancies and additional savings or negotiation opportunities.
- Project spending and contract performance to inform renewal planning.
Duckbill’s current product description extends the idea beyond traditional hyperscaler contracts to prepaid credits, reserved capacity, AI infrastructure, neoclouds and inference providers. It also describes commitment tracking, benchmarking, invoice validation and forecasting. These are vendor-stated capabilities and positioning, not independently established measures of accuracy or customer results. Skyway’s platform page describes the current offer; the original Skyway launch post introduced Contract Manager and said access was private at launch on November 18, 2025.
Who Skyway is aimed at
At launch, Duckbill positioned Skyway for the “nine-figure club”—organizations spending roughly $100 million or more a year on cloud infrastructure. GeekWire reported that Duckbill’s consulting clients included Airtable, Ticketmaster and New Relic, and that clients averaged about $70 million in annual cloud infrastructure spending. Those figures are attributed to company and interview reporting, not independently audited customer data. Duckbill’s launch post explains the original spending threshold.
The company’s current messaging reaches across hyperscalers, AI model and inference providers, neoclouds and coding assistants, while remaining oriented toward large finance, procurement and infrastructure workflows. Its current homepage reflects that broader provider ambition; it does not establish that every provider has equivalent product coverage today.
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- Smaller teams may get more immediate value from allocation, budget alerts, anomaly detection and rightsizing than from a system for complex contracts.
- Large enterprises with substantial commitments may need contract validation, scenario modeling, renewal planning and audit evidence alongside ordinary cost visibility.
- The clearest theoretical fit is an organization whose financial exposure comes not only from wasted usage, but also from an incorrect commitment or an unexplained large invoice.
How Skyway differs from other FinOps categories
“FinOps” covers several different jobs, so a buyer should compare products by the problem they solve rather than by a generic feature checklist.
| Category | Primary job | How it relates to Skyway |
|---|---|---|
| Cost allocation and showback | Assign spend to teams, products, business units or customers. | Useful for accountability; not necessarily designed to model private contract terms in depth. |
| Workload optimization | Find rightsizing, scheduling, architecture or idle-resource savings. | Targets usage efficiency, while Skyway’s thesis centers on commercial terms and financial planning. |
| Cloud cost intelligence | Provide cost dimensions, dashboards, anomaly detection and unit economics. | Can clarify spend patterns; Duckbill says Skyway links those patterns to contracts and commitments. |
| Contract-aware infrastructure planning | Connect negotiated terms, consumption, commitments, invoices, forecasts and procurement decisions. | This is the category Duckbill is trying to establish. |
That positioning does not establish that Skyway is the only product capable of any one function. A company may already use provider billing tools, a cost platform, a data warehouse, ERP or FP&A software, procurement systems and internal spreadsheets. A buyer should determine whether Skyway would replace a tool, integrate with it, or serve as a specialized contract system of record.
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Julian is CEO and co-founder; Quinn is co-founder and a prominent AWS and cloud-cost commentator associated with Last Week in AWS. Duckbill says it has negotiated or advised on tens of billions of dollars in cloud contracts. That scale is a company claim, but it helps explain the founders’ proposed advantage: experience with the commercial details that can be hard to capture in ordinary billing dashboards. GeekWire’s report covers the founders and their consulting history.
The transition is not Duckbill’s first attempt at software. Quinn described a 2022 effort as a failure, saying the team built from assumptions rather than talking enough with customers. That history makes the current move a second productization attempt informed by consulting work, not a simple conversion of a services firm into a software business. It also leaves a real question: can recurring customer problems be made into a repeatable product rather than bespoke advice?
Consulting may create customer trust and reveal valuable requirements, but software could eventually cannibalize some of that work. The company will need to show that customers can get value from a consistent platform without requiring an ever-expanding amount of hands-on expert support.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why AI matters to the thesis
Duckbill’s public positioning treats AI as a source of new infrastructure-spending complexity, not as a claim that Skyway itself is an AI forecasting product. AI workloads can be experimental, variable and difficult to forecast, while providers may use distinct economics for tokens, inference, capacity and commitments. The company’s stated premise is that well-structured commercial and usage data may be more useful than adding a chatbot to a cost dashboard.
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Quinn reportedly called structured information “AI candy”: data organized well enough that customers could use it in their own AI systems. The public material does not establish that Skyway offers AI-generated forecasts, automated negotiations or model-specific optimization. Better contract context can support planning, but it cannot remove uncertainty about demand, workload changes or provider pricing.
What buyers should verify before evaluating Skyway
Contract-aware planning is only as useful as the data and rules behind it. An enterprise buyer should ask how the product handles its actual contracts and operational systems, not assume broad provider language means every integration or clause is already supported.
- Contract coverage: Can the platform represent the organization’s AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, AI-provider, neocloud and SaaS agreements, including addenda, credits, tiers, minimums and exceptions?
- Data integration: Which billing exports, invoices, usage feeds, procurement systems, ERP tools and data warehouses are supported? How often does data refresh, and can normalized data be exported?
- Forecasting: Are projections based on actual contractual rates or public list prices? Can teams model workload growth, AI demand, provider shifts and commitment scenarios? Are assumptions explainable and auditable?
- Invoice validation: Can the platform produce evidence useful in a billing dispute? Does it distinguish provider billing errors from tagging or allocation errors? How are credits, refunds and retroactive corrections handled?
- Benchmarking: Where does benchmark data come from, how is it anonymized and refreshed, and how are comparisons made fair across differently sized or structured contracts?
- Workflow fit: Does Skyway replace spreadsheets, integrate with them or sit alongside existing FinOps tools? Can finance, procurement, engineering and executives work from consistent figures with appropriate permissions and audit trails?
- Commercial model and implementation: Is pricing based on spend, data volume, contracts, users, providers or negotiated scope? Is there a minimum commitment, and what professional services are required for onboarding?
- Proof of value: How quickly can a customer find a recoverable discrepancy or contract opportunity? How much spend must be modeled before forecasts become useful, and can Duckbill provide references with similarly complex commitments?
What remains unproven
Duckbill’s public product pages invite prospective customers to request a demo; they do not list Skyway pricing. The original launch described private access, while the current website markets the platform without establishing a general-availability date. There is also no public evidence in the cited coverage for customer count, recurring revenue, retention, forecast accuracy, contracts modeled, independently verified billing-error recovery, or customer references. The platform page is the current source for its sales-led buying path.
Quick Recap
- Contract data quality: Missing contracts, stale commitment records, inconsistent billing accounts or late usage data could create false confidence.
- Forecast limits: Sudden demand shifts, experimental AI workloads, provider price changes, nonstandard clauses and architecture changes can undermine projections even when contract rates are modeled correctly.
- Enterprise sales and deployment: Large buyers may have lengthy security, legal, procurement and implementation cycles; a seed-funded vendor must prove it can support those buyers reliably.
- Provider breadth: Hyperscalers, AI APIs, neoclouds, SaaS and legacy infrastructure use different billing formats, commitment rules, credit mechanics and invoice timing. A broad vision is not evidence of equal support across them.
- Benchmark trust: Commercial benchmarks are valuable only if customers understand how data is collected, protected, anonymized and kept current without exposing sensitive deal terms.
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