Daytona

📂 Artificial Intelligence📂 Software Enterprise📍 San Francisco🗓️ Founded: 2023

A startup with Croatian founders offering Linux, Windows, macOS and GPU sandboxes where AI agents run code, use tools and keep state securely.

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Podcast Episode

🎙️ Deep Dive

Blackwall, Daytona, Starling — $160M for cyber and agent cloud, while fintech reprices — Daily News October 20, 2026

Listen to the episode

About Daytona

Founded in 2023 by Ivan Burazin (CEO), Goran Draganić and Vedran Jukić, Daytona builds an execution layer for AI agents: isolated computers, browsers and storage that start in about 60 milliseconds, can be paused with state intact, forked into parallel copies and torn down when work ends. The founders and most of the technical team are Croatian, with engineering concentrated in Zagreb and Split; Fortune gives San Francisco as headquarters, while The Recursive gives New York. Named customers include Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia, Cohere, Writer and Snorkel. After a $24 million Series A led by FirstMark in February 2026, on October 20, 2026 it closed a $60 million Series B led by FirstMark Growth at a $1 billion valuation, becoming the third unicorn of Croatian origin.

The Story

Ivan Burazin, previously founder of Codeanywhere and organiser of the Shift conference, started Daytona in 2023 with Goran Draganić and Vedran Jukić, beginning with cloud development environments before focusing on AI-agent execution.

How Daytona works

Business Model

B2B cloud infrastructure accessed through a platform and APIs.

Revenue Model

Revenue from platform usage; amounts undisclosed.

Products & Services

Key Products

  • Agent Execution Cloud
  • Sandbox Linux, Windows, macOS e GPU

Core Use Cases

  • Isolated execution of AI-generated code
  • Browsing and tool use in controlled environments
  • Forking and parallelising agent workloads
  • Agent training and evaluation

Market & Clients

Key Customers

AI labs, training-data and environment providers, and product companies; named customers include Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia, Cohere, Writer, Snorkel and Postman.

Geographic Presence

USHR

How Daytona competes

Competitive Advantages

  • Reported startup in about 60 milliseconds
  • Support for Linux, Windows, macOS and GPUs
  • State persistence and forking for agents

How Daytona grows

Growth Strategy

Move from sandboxes to a full agent cloud and hire across engineering, go-to-market and operations.

Distribution Model

Direct platform and API access and enterprise sales.

Moat (Defensibility)

Specialised orchestration for agent workloads, integrations with AI customers and operational data on performance and usage.

Regulatory Context

Data protection for executed workloads, multi-tenant isolation and restrictions on GPUs and international data transfers.

Key Risks

  • Commoditisation by hyperscalers
  • Compute costs and margin pressure
  • Security risks from executing untrusted code
  • Growth metrics not independently verified

Strategic Insights

  • The product sits below applications and models, at the execution layer.
  • Defensibility will depend on performance, reliability, security and cross-platform integration.

Funding & Investors

Total Funding

91000000

Latest Valuation

$1B (Series B del 20/10/2026; base non specificata) (2026)

Funding Rounds

  • 2023 - Pre-seed: €1,8M
  • 2024 - Seed: €4,6M
    Lead: Upfront Ventures
  • 2026 - Series A: $24M
    Lead: FirstMark Capital
  • 2026 - Series B: $60M
    Lead: FirstMark Growth

Key Investors

FirstMarkE2VCUpfront VenturesPace CapitalQualcomm VenturesSamsung NextOkta Ventures

Founding Team

Founders

Ivan BurazinCo-founder & CEO
Goran DraganićCo-founder
Vedran JukićCo-founder

Key Metrics

Valutazione$1 miliardo (2026)
Crescita del run rate dei ricavicirca 25 volte tra gennaio e settembre 2026 (2026)
Net revenue retention mensile mediacirca 135% (2026)
Team tecnico in Croaziacirca 20 persone (2026)

Lessons from Daytona

  • A shift in application architecture can create demand for a new infrastructure primitive.

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Sources

🎙️ Scalable Podcast — European startup stories · 🇮🇹 in Italian
Spotify 🎧 Apple