MIT, Stanford Researchers Raise Seed Funding For A New Type Of Operating System

Source: BostInno, Michael Stonebraker
Photo: Isabel Tehan

An MIT and Stanford research project-turned-startup is launching a new type of operating system with $8.5 million in seed funding.

The company, DBOS Inc., is co-founded by some of the most well-known people in the computer science world: serial tech startup mogul Michael Stonebraker, Databricks co-founder and CTO Matei Zaharia, and a team of MIT and Stanford researchers.

The researchers said their new operating system will make users all but immune to ransomware attacks.

The product, DBOS Cloud, is an application development environment that Stonebraker said is simpler and more secure than legacy operating systems. The company says it is the first ever cloud-native operating system, making it completely serverless.

The premise of DBOS Cloud is to simplify the way cloud applications are built and deployed.

With typical systems, Stonebraker said, the operating system is like a “leaky boat,” and all sorts of security measures have to be added on top to “make the leaks go away.”

“We are replacing the leaky boat,” Stonebraker said.

DBOS stands for Database-Oriented Operating System, and it was designed as an advanced computer science program to reduce programs running in tandem with cloud applications, so that data is more recoverable, and so the systems are less vulnerable to attacks, bugs, and losses of information.

The system aims to be a step forward in innovations for the cloud, preventing reliance on legacy code. Stonebraker said the operating system will do more for users, reducing the amount of code that needs to be written.

With the release of DBOS, the startup aims to target software providers as customers, said Andy Ellicot, head of marketing at DBOS, Inc. The DBOS platform makes communication between software automatic, reducing the number of wires that could be crossed, according to the company.

New startups that aren’t working with a lot of legacy code are prime customers, Stonemaker said. DBOS bills itself as providing a better programming environment for these kinds of companies.

The funding was led by Engine Ventures and Construct Capital, with participation from Sinewave and GutBrain Ventures.

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/inno/stories/news/2024/03/12/dbos-seed-cloud