Cloudforce, a frontier AI company based in Maryland, announced the completion of a $10 million Series A funding round led by Owl Ventures, the world's largest EdTech-focused VC fund. The round also includes strategic participation from M12, Microsoft's venture fund. This investment provides direct access to Microsoft's enterprise sales organization and product teams and highlights the technology giant's strong support for Cloudforce's flagship platform nebulaONE®.
This capital injection comes in the midst of a period of explosive growth for Cloudforce. nebulaONE currently serves more than 3 million users at 90 institutions around the world, including the University of Oxford, UCLA, University of Maryland, and London Business School, and the company is currently rolling out to several new organizations each week. This funding will accelerate nebulaONE's global expansion, expanding its mission to provide safe and unbiased “AI for all” to students, faculty, and researchers around the world, while rapidly expanding its footprint in the healthcare space and broader public sector, where the company has already secured its first six customers following HIPAA certification earlier this year.
Cloudforce's nebulaONE has emerged as the definitive solution for agencies grappling with the complexities of generative AI deployment. Built exclusively on Microsoft Azure, the platform provides a secure “bring your own model” interface that allows organizations to deploy top-of-the-line AI models such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta within their own private cloud tenant. This architecture solves critical challenges such as data sovereignty, privacy compliance (FERPA, HIPAA, GDPR), and cost control that have traditionally slowed the deployment of AI in regulated industries.
“We are interested in how nebulaONE brings together accessibility, security and flexibility for users,” said Alwyn Collinson, director of the University of Oxford AI Competency Center, which began piloting nebulaONE just before the autumn term. “At Oxford, we don't see AI as a tool of the future, but as a capability that needs to be deployed responsibly now.” The main campus instance of nebulaONE comes on the heels of another successful pilot at Oxford's Saïd Business School over the summer.
“At Cloudforce, we believe that the latest and most capable AI models should not be a luxury reserved for the few who can pay a few hundred dollars a month for a subscription, or who are willing to give up their personal data for access.With support from Owl Ventures and M12, Microsoft's venture fund, institutions in London, Los Angeles, and Oakland are rapidly deploying private AI environments to enable employees to access all AI We're aggressively expanding our footprint to ensure fair access to our products. We're building the infrastructure to power the next decade of discovery at a cost no other platform can offer.”
— Hussein Sharaf, Founder and CEO, Cloudforce
Owl Ventures' involvement highlights Cloudforce's unique position in the EdTech ecosystem. Unlike use case-specific tools that offer niche solutions, nebulaONE provides the foundational infrastructure for universities to deploy AI at scale.
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“We're always looking for companies around the world that are not just building tools, but are fundamentally reimagining how education systems operate. Cloudforce has cracked the code on scaling AI infrastructure in a way that meets the stringent security demands of top universities while delivering the user experience that students and faculty love. Over 90 educational institutions, 2 quarterly The numbers speak for themselves: digit revenue growth, and sales velocity that is accelerating rather than slowing down. We are excited to partner with Hussain and the team aims to bring this secure innovation to millions more learners around the world. ”
— Lyman Missimer, Investor, Owl Ventures
For Microsoft, the investment through M12 solidifies a long-standing partnership. Cloudforce was recently named Microsoft's 2025 Education Partner of the Year. We stand out among more than 500,000 partners around the world and demonstrate alignment with Microsoft's vision for responsible AI.
“Cloudforce has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to leverage the Microsoft Azure ecosystem to solve last-mile delivery challenges for enterprise AI. The company's nebulaONE platform transforms powerful raw models into secure, compliant, and deployable business assets for the public sector. Our investment builds on Cloudforce's technical rigor and support for Cloudforce in driving meaningful AI adoption in education and healthcare across large organizations around the world. reflects our confidence in the important role of
— Michael Stewart, M12 (Microsoft Venture Fund) Managing Partner
Cloudforce's nebulaONE is currently deployed in the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, and New Zealand. With this Series A, Cloudforce plans to significantly increase adoption in 2026, launching new industry-specific AI agents for education and healthcare workflows, and expanding into the broader public sector. The company's unique business model of wrapping AI platform deployments with expert consulting, organizational change management, and forward-deploying engineers has proven effective and repeatable, resulting in remarkable subscriber retention of 100% in 2025.
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