Vega Cloud’s stumble is a sobering reminder in a world obsessed with AI and high-flying stocks that success in tech is never guaranteed. In a tech landscape dominated by headlines about soaring valuations, AI breakthroughs, and unicorn startups, stories such as Vega Cloud’s recent fall into receivership often go unnoticed. Yet, they are just as important, if not more so, in understanding the realities of today’s business environment which we will be discussing at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference and Expo.

Vega Cloud, a Spokane-based privately held tech standout with a strong investor base and board of directors that included luminaries Sean Boyle, Bob DeSantis and Matthew Gerber, was once a rising star in the cloud optimization space. It has been led by co-founder Kris Bliesner, an accomplished tech leader with an impressive resume that includes five years as a Microsoft director and founder/CEO of 2nd Watch.

Despite today's frothy times, Vega Cloud entered receivership with less than $17,000 in the bank, according to GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, who reported on the King County Superior Court filing. Receivership is a legal process in which a court appoints an independent third party (receiver) to take control of a company or its assets.

Kris Bliesner
According to PitchBook data, Vega Cloud, founded in 2018,had raised $12.2 million and reached about $7 million in annual revenue as of 2023. It had also cracked the GeekWire 200. Just last March, Vega Cloud announced a partnership with CDW-owned Mission quoting Mission CTO Jonathan LaCour on the deal. A few months ago, Bliesner promoted Vega Cloud’s inclusion in Forrester’s Q3 2025 Cloud Cost Management & Optimization Landscape. So things appeared to be going well.

Not all Sunshine for Cloud and Tech Companies

The FinOps-focused SaaS company aimed to help businesses manage and reduce their cloud computing costs—an increasingly critical need in a world where cloud infrastructure is the backbone of digital transformation. Some investors in the company, including Martin Tobias, had high hopes for achieving strong returns from Vega Cloud. Hopefully, the company can reverse its fortunes to get back on its feet.

This development is a stark reminder that even promising companies with innovative solutions can face insurmountable challenges. The reasons behind Vega Cloud’s struggles are complex, but they reflect broader pressures in the tech industry especially in the SaaS software space where stocks prices of such powerhouses as Salesforce and Adobe have been battered as of late.

“Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart,” Omdia principal analyst Jay McBain posted on LinkedIn about Vega Cloud. “According to government sources, 71% of tech companies do not make it 10 years. In the Fortune 500, 52% of companies don't make it 20 years.”

Bliesner’s leadership and vision for Vega Cloud were commendable, and the company’s fall into receivership is a harsh reminder that the tech industry is not all glitter and gold. For every OpenAI, Anthropic or Nvidia, there are countless startups fighting to survive in an unforgiving market.

I tried to reach Bliesner at his offices and via LinkedIn and will update this story if he responds.