Case StudiesShaped: Cloud Infrastructure for real-time AI inference
Adapting the AI-powered large-scale retrieval platform for rapid growth
To satisfy rapidly increasing demand and adapt their systems for growth, Shaped, a YC‑backed startup, partnered with Fibertide.
Collaboration Overview
The Client
Shaped is a US‑based, YC‑backed startup offering a developer‑first platform, where engineers can deploy bespoke retrieval and ranking engines in a single sprint.
Why did they need us?
When the volume of the requests they had to serve started growing exponentially, upkeep and improvements to their infrastructure started stealing away their attention.
How did we help?
Shaped handed off infrastructure-related work to Fibertide. Our extensive experience in transforming cloud systems allowed us to provide scalability solutions in line with Shaped’s ambitious goals.
This way, Shaped could focus on their product, while we made sure that their infrastructure was ready to handle further growth.
Client Insights
Location:
NYC, USA
Industry:
SaaS, RecSys, Auto‑ML
Funding Stage:
Series A
"During periods of significant growth at Shaped, accurately predicting our engineering support needs was challenging. Fibertide has been an ideal partner, offering flexible work hours and month-to-month pricing. For instance, when we onboarded a larger client with specific feature requirements, we were able to quickly scale up resources from Fibertide. Their team ramped up incredibly fast, enabling us to meet the client’s needs on time."
Tullie Murrell
CEO & Co-Founder at Shaped
The Challenge
System's reliability affected by an exponential growth in the volume of requests
Infrastructure issues stealing the attention of engineers
Unidentified cache timeouts, affecting users experience
Our Solution
Replacing architecture bottlenecks with scalable solutions
Taking responsibility for and streamlining system's infrastructure
Thoroughly investigating timeouts in a complex concurrent component of the system
Results
System is ready for next levels of scale
Shaped can focus on their product
Cache timeouts are gone
New features can be rolled out quickly and confidently
Project Highlights
Motivation
Shaped knew that their time was best spent on developing their product rather than tweaking their infrastructure. However, they were also aware that their infrastructure needs required exceptional quality, which would match their ambitious scale and reliability goals.
Collaboration
Aiming to win back the time of their core employees, Shaped partnered with Fibertide in October 2024. Having the experience necessary to meet the high quality that Shaped required, our dedicated team of experts took over the responsibility for scale and reliability goals, allowing Shaped's engineers to focus on their core business.
Our work
After initial research and discussions, our team focused on multiple architectural pivots, which Shaped needed, but never had the capacity to focus on with due diligence:
- migration of low latency cache from a centralized Redis instance to a dynamic solution;
- rewrite of asynchronous operations in multiple APIs;
- migration of user‑facing APIs from a high‑level managed service to a low‑level Kubernetes counterpart;
- implementation of proper canary rollouts instead of simplified blue‑green deployments.
Every one of these operations was performed as a well‑defined and transparent process. We employed extra care to ensure that crucial switches did not induce any downtime. This way, Shaped’s customers could enjoy their platform without any disruptions.
Key Outcomes
Our solution delivered tangible improvements across performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency, empowering the client to focus on growth.
Enhanced Scalability
The architecture bottlenecks were successfully replaced with scalable solutions, paving the way for Shaped to reach next levels of scale.
Improved Reliability
Multiple root causes of application errors have been tracked down and remediated, freeing Shaped from hours of headaches.
Peace of mind
Our commitment to delivering solutions of highest quality allowed Shaped to focus on their product.
Reduced costs
After thorough analysis and optimization, costs of the most expensive cloud bill item were reduced by 80%.
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