Israeli observability startup groundcover has secured $35 million in Series B funding to disrupt the cloud monitoring space, challenging legacy giants like Datadog. The round, led by Zeev Ventures with support from Heavybit, Jibe Ventures, and Angular Ventures, brings groundcover’s total funding to $60 million. With this fresh capital, the company is pushing hard into the U.S. market, where it’s already replacing traditional platforms such as New Relic, Grafana Cloud, and Datadog.
Founded in 2021 by Shahar Azulay and Yechezkel Rabinovich, groundcover is on a mission to eliminate the pain points of legacy observability tools. Both founders bring deep cybersecurity experience from their time in Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office, where they faced firsthand the limitations of legacy application performance monitoring (APM) systems.
Built for Modern Cloud-Native Environments
Traditional monitoring tools are often bloated, expensive, and lack the scalability modern cloud-native applications demand. They can leave gaps in visibility, forcing engineering teams to limit what they monitor to stay within budget.
groundcover changes that. Its platform uses eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) technology to deliver lightweight, real-time observability with zero code changes and no performance hits. This modern approach gives engineering teams full-stack insights without relying on sidecars, SDKs, or service meshes.
“We built groundcover to solve the exact frustrations we had with APM tools,” said Azulay. “They’re not only expensive but often fail to deliver the precision needed to troubleshoot issues fast. groundcover gives teams complete visibility, reduces resolution time, and eliminates expensive blind spots.”
From Kernel to Clarity: eBPF Is the Secret Weapon
At the heart of groundcover’s innovation is eBPF, a Linux kernel technology that allows the platform to collect telemetry data without injecting code into applications. This enables real-time monitoring of everything from network traffic and system calls to application behavior, without adding memory or CPU strain.
This architecture also enables cross-layer correlation — linking low-level infrastructure events with application-level logs and traces. For example, when a database query slows down, groundcover can pinpoint if the root cause was a Kubernetes pod being rescheduled. This level of visibility has helped clients reduce their mean time to resolution (MTTR) by up to 60%.
Introducing the First “Bring Your Own Cloud” Observability Platform
What truly sets groundcover apart is its “Bring Your Own Cloud” (BYOC) model. Unlike traditional SaaS observability platforms that store customer data in vendor-controlled environments, groundcover lets companies retain control of their data within their own cloud infrastructure.
This gives teams the best of both worlds: full observability and the security, compliance, and control of self-hosted systems, paired with the simplicity of a managed SaaS experience.
“groundcover is transforming the observability space,” said Oren Zeev, founder of Zeev Ventures. “Its eBPF-first platform and BYOC architecture set a new standard for cost-efficiency, depth of monitoring, and data control. It’s exactly what enterprises need in the AI-driven observability era.”
Seamless Migration from Datadog and Other Legacy Tools
Many companies have already moved from platforms like Datadog to groundcover — and the process has become even easier with groundcover’s AI-powered migration tool. This service lets teams quickly transfer their dashboards, monitors, and data, avoiding vendor lock-in and eliminating the pain of switching platforms.
“For us, using Datadog meant paying double — once for infrastructure and again for observability,” said Alex Nauda, CTO of Nobl9. “With groundcover, we control our costs, our data retention policies, and avoid nasty surprises like overage charges or data deletions.”
Fast Growth, Big Ambitions
Since launching, groundcover has grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 500% year-over-year and now employs 60 team members. Its platform supports a wide range of clients — from fast-scaling startups to Fortune 100 enterprises — all seeking modern, scalable observability without the high costs or performance trade-offs.
The company is also forming strategic partnerships with major cloud providers, including AWS and Google Cloud, as part of its global growth plans.
What’s Next: AI-Powered, Cost-Efficient Observability at Scale
groundcover isn’t just building a better APM — it’s redefining the future of observability. As the cost of SaaS-based tools continues to rise, and demand for AI-ready observability data increases, the company’s architecture positions it to become a category leader.
Azulay summed it up best: “We’re leading a shift toward commoditized observability. Our BYOC approach makes monitoring affordable, efficient, and secure — all without sacrificing performance. And as AI becomes more central to how companies analyze data, our architecture is ready to deliver even greater value.”
Over the next few years, groundcover aims to continue displacing legacy tools, offering scalable solutions that align with the needs of modern engineering teams — whether in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.
