Internet Backyard Secures $4.5M to Modernize Data Center Billing for the AI Era

In a digital economy increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, the infrastructure powering these systems often relies on surprisingly outdated financial operations. Internet Backyard, a promising new startup that launched just two months ago, has secured $4.5 million in pre-seed funding to address this disconnect. Led by CEO Mai Trinh, formerly of Sanctuary AI, and CTO Gabriel Ravacci, who recently engineered next-generation AI accelerators at AMD, the company aims to revolutionize how data centers and GPU providers handle their billing processes. The five-person team originally established in Vancouver, B.C. is now relocating to San Francisco to be at the heart of the tech industry as they build what they describe as a “financial infrastructure layer for the AI compute economy.” Their mission directly targets the surprising inefficiency lurking behind the scenes of even the most advanced computing facilities—replacing the manual spreadsheets and disjointed handoffs between sales, operations, and finance departments with a streamlined, automated solution.

This funding round, led by Basis Set Ventures, brings together an impressive coalition of investors who recognize the critical need for modernization in data center financial operations. Additional backers include Crucible Capital, Maple VC, Operator Collective, Seattle-based Breakers, and several notable angel investors with deep industry experience. Among these individual investors are Equinix founder Jay Adelson, D-Wave and Sanctuary AI founder Geordie Rose, and Bench Accounting founder Ian Crosby—all entrepreneurs who have previously built successful companies in adjacent sectors. This collection of investors signals strong confidence in Internet Backyard’s vision, particularly as AI computation demands continue to escalate across industries, creating unprecedented pressure on data center billing systems that were never designed for today’s complex usage patterns and pricing models.

At the center of Internet Backyard’s offering is their flagship product, gnomos, a comprehensive platform designed to help data center operators and their customers accurately track and charge for GPU and infrastructure usage. The product addresses a surprisingly persistent problem in the technology industry: despite the incredible sophistication of modern computing infrastructure, the financial systems managing these resources often remain rudimentary. Many facilities still rely on manual spreadsheets and disconnected processes to handle millions or even billions in transactions. This creates significant inefficiencies, with potential revenue leakage, customer frustration, and operational bottlenecks. Gnomos aims to eliminate these problems by providing an end-to-end solution that connects sales commitments with actual resource utilization and financial settlements, ensuring transparency and accuracy throughout the entire order-to-cash process.

The company’s revenue model is designed to align Internet Backyard’s success with that of their clients. Rather than charging fixed subscription fees, they plan to take a percentage of the invoice income they help recover, plus fees on routed payment flows and data licensing. This approach positions them as partners in their clients’ financial health rather than just another vendor expense. The strategy seems particularly well-suited for an industry where billing accuracy directly impacts bottom-line results. Beyond just improving operational efficiency, Internet Backyard’s solution promises to recover previously lost revenue through more precise tracking and billing—an appealing proposition for data center operators working with thin margins and high capital expenditures on rapidly evolving hardware like specialized AI accelerators and GPUs that can cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit.

Looking beyond their immediate product offering, Internet Backyard harbors ambitions to become a data aggregation layer for industry benchmarks and performance metrics. This longer-term vision could position them at the center of a valuable information ecosystem, providing insights not just to individual operators but to the industry as a whole. By collecting anonymized data across their client base, they could potentially offer unprecedented visibility into resource utilization patterns, pricing trends, and performance benchmarks—information that is currently fragmented and largely inaccessible. This approach could transform Internet Backyard from a simple billing solution into a strategic intelligence platform for the entire data center industry, particularly as AI computation continues to grow as a percentage of overall infrastructure usage.

The timing of Internet Backyard’s emergence could hardly be more opportune. The explosive growth in AI computation needs has stretched existing data center resources and business models, creating an urgent demand for more sophisticated operational tools. As organizations around the world race to deploy increasingly complex AI systems, the physical infrastructure supporting these initiatives faces unprecedented challenges in scaling, efficiency, and financial management. By addressing the critical junction between technical operations and financial systems, Internet Backyard positions itself at a vital pressure point in the industry. If they can successfully execute their vision, the company could become an essential layer in the rapidly evolving AI infrastructure ecosystem—transforming how computational resources are monetized and managed while helping to ensure that the physical foundation of our AI-powered future rests on solid financial ground.