Internet Backyard Raises $4.5M Pre-Seed to Build Financial Infrastructure for the Global Compute Economy

Internet Backyard, a San Francisco‑based startup building the financial backbone for the global compute economy, has raised $4.5 million in a pre‑seed funding round to accelerate the development of its AI‑powered financial infrastructure platform for data centers and compute providers. The financing, which values the company at around $25 million post‑money, reflects strong investor interest in solutions that modernize quoting, billing, payments, and financial workflows in the rapidly growing world of AI compute.

The round was led by Basis Set Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early‑stage investing in foundational technology companies. Basis Set’s lead investment underscores confidence in Internet Backyard’s vision of standardizing and automating financial operations for the data center and GPU cloud sectors, where financial tooling often remains fragmented and manual despite booming demand.

Joining Basis Set in the financing were several other prominent institutional and angel investors, including Crucible Capital, Maple VC, Breakers, and Operator Collective. These firms bring domain expertise in software, infrastructure, and AI, and their participation broadens the strategic support behind Internet Backyard as it scales its technology and go‑to‑market efforts.

Several experienced angel investors also backed the round, adding valuable industry knowledge and entrepreneurial experience. Among them are Jay Adelson, the co‑founder of Equinix and seasoned startup investor; Geordie Rose, founder of D‑Wave and a veteran of deep technology ventures; and Ian Crosby, co‑founder of Bench Accounting, whose insights into financial software and scaling early startups are expected to benefit Internet Backyard as it expands.

Co‑founded by CEO Mai Trinh and CTO Gabriel Ravacci, Internet Backyard aims to solve persistent inefficiencies in financial operations for data centers — particularly those that power AI workloads. Many compute providers still rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual reconciliation processes to manage billing and revenue collection, which can lead to billing disputes, revenue leakage, and slow cash flow. The company’s flagship product, Gnomos, uses automation and AI to handle the full order‑to‑cash cycle — including quoting, usage metering, billing, payments, and dispute resolution — in a more streamlined and transparent way.

The compute economy has rapidly grown in importance as AI demand has surged, with spending on compute resources representing a significant portion of IT budgets for AI‑centric companies. In this context, Internet Backyard’s technology addresses both operational challenges and broader market needs by creating a foundation that allows compute transactions and pricing to be standardized and potentially tradable. Its tooling is already being piloted with early customers, including Vancouver‑based data center operator AxiNorth, as the startup works to prove real‑world impact and adoption.

In addition to automating workflows, Internet Backyard envisions future expansions that may touch financial benchmarking and settlement infrastructure for compute markets, building toward what it describes as a more robust economic system for AI compute resources. The company’s long‑term ambitions include offering analytical insights and standardized financial objects that can help both compute providers and capital markets better understand and underwrite the compute economy.

Trinh and Ravacci originally started the venture in Vancouver before relocating the company’s headquarters to San Francisco to accelerate growth and access a broader startup ecosystem. According to Trinh, the move was motivated by factors such as faster access to pilot customers, clearer regulatory pathways for visas, and more receptive markets for early‑stage innovation in fintech and AI infrastructure.

The new funding will help Internet Backyard expand its engineering team, enhance product capabilities, and deepen integrations with data centers, GPU cloud providers, and other compute stakeholders. As the company builds out its roadmap, it plans to support broader adoption of its financial automation suite and lay the groundwork for additional offerings that further integrate compute finance into enterprise and capital workflows.

Internet Backyard’s raise adds to a growing trend of early‑stage investment in infrastructure technologies that support the backbone of the AI industry. By focusing on financial tooling — a layer often overlooked relative to compute hardware and software stack innovations — the startup is carving out a niche that addresses a critical and increasingly complex component of global AI operations.

With institutional backing from top‑tier VCs and insights from seasoned angels, Internet Backyard is poised to accelerate its product development and market entry, aiming to become a key enabler of transparency, efficiency, and scalability in the compute economy.