Computing costs are spiraling out of control for many businesses, especially those adopting AI at scale. Some are now spending in a single week what they once spent in an entire year on cloud infrastructure. Todd Smith saw this crisis coming years ago and founded TAHO to address it. He describes the company as creating “the first cloud performance layer,” a solution designed to deliver genuine efficiency rather than simply squeezing more utilization out of existing systems.
Spotting the Problem Before Anyone Cared
Smith and his two co-founders have worked together for nearly 20 years, tackling major infrastructure projects across multiple companies. In 2018, they spotted a serious issue. “We looked at all of the cloud and data center operations and saw a major bottleneck embedded in every large compute infrastructure,” Smith says. At the time, their bosses were not interested. “We went to our bosses in the respective companies we were working at, and they all said, ‘Computing is cheap, don’t worry about that,’” he recalls. The three founders shelved the idea and waited for the right moment. That moment arrived with the AI boom. “With the advent of AI, cloud computing now processes workloads that are 100 times the size they were back in 2018,” Smith says. Overnight, their solution shifted from a nice-to-have to an absolute necessity.
Delivering Faster Workflows for Less Cost
Most companies in this space focus on eliminating idle time from cloud infrastructure. Smith believes that approach misses the point entirely. “Just because you are doing more of the same task does not mean it is valuable,” he says. “That work could be busy work, lost work, or inefficient processes — you are just doing more of it.” TAHO takes a completely different approach. Instead of simply maximizing utilization, the company removes bottlenecks from the actual workflows. “We execute those workloads 30 times faster than anything else on the market today,” Smith says. That speed creates massive cost savings because cloud computing is billed by the hour. When work finishes 30 times faster, companies pay dramatically less. The impact is hard to ignore. “Our customers pay roughly 10 percent of their original costs, achieving a 90 percent savings,” he explains.
Empowering Teams for Faster Decisions
Smith’s leadership style was shaped by years in middle management roles that left him frustrated. Rather than forcing decisions up the corporate ladder, he pushes them down to the people doing the actual work. “We drive authority to the people closest to the work. We don’t force decisions up the chain,” he says. This approach addresses multiple problems at once. Traditional hierarchies create bottlenecks because “fewer decisions get made, and the distance between the work being done and the person making the decision is far greater.” Flipping that model means “the person most familiar with the challenge is also the most informed. They were hired for their expertise and are trusted to get the work done.” People respond strongly to this freedom. “All of a sudden we get way more value out of people. They lean into problems and solve them much quicker,” Smith notes.
Enabling New Ventures Through AI
While many people fear AI will eliminate jobs, Smith sees it creating opportunities for displaced workers to start their own businesses. “Those individuals who now find themselves out of work can actually flex into the marketplace as their own early stage company or their own small business,” he says. The combination of AI tools and affordable computing power through platforms like TAHO makes this possible. “People now have the ability to output far more by leveraging AI tools. And now with TAHO, they have access to the computing capabilities that previously were not even possible within their budgets,” he explains.
Smith often demonstrates TAHO’s capabilities with a simple test that highlights the difference between utilization and efficiency. Running a single AI inference using standard tools takes 24 seconds. “When we run it leveraging our product, it takes 800 milliseconds,” he says. Both scenarios show nearly 100 percent GPU utilization, but TAHO finishes the same work 30 times faster. “It is the same work being done. It gets to the same result, but it is far quicker when you use our product,” he notes.
TAHO launched sales just a month ago and is already securing customers. As AI adoption accelerates and computing costs continue to rise, Smith’s solution is addressing a challenge that will only become more urgent.
Connect with Todd Smith on LinkedIn to explore how TAHO can transform your cloud performance strategy.
