Two Startups That Scaled Globally Without a DevOps Team

AI startups in the APAC region are receiving massive investment, but they face challenges such as a shortage of DevOps engineers and high labor costs. As a result, an operating model that automates infrastructure to focus on product development instead of infrastructure management is spreading.

Relevance AI operates tens of thousands of AI agents autonomously without a separate infrastructure team by leveraging the Vercel REST API. They automate sales and marketing workflows, performing everything from building web experiences to deployment without human intervention.

Leonardo.AI has achieved rapid growth, processing more than 4.5 million images daily. In the past, infrastructure management caused problems with build times and page load speeds, but after adopting Vercel, they achieved the following results.

• Build time: 10+ minutes → 2 minutes
• Page load time: 60 seconds (without cache) → about 3 seconds
• Product release cycle: several months → 2 weeks

This model automates infrastructure provisioning, scaling, and observability, allowing engineers to focus solely on improving their models. For AI-native startups, reducing the burden of infrastructure management is becoming a key strategy for securing product competitiveness.