Independent Cloud Infrastructure & AI Platform Neutrality

Every infrastructure provider has commercial interests, and Atlantic.Net is no exception. We sell cloud computing, technical support, managed services, and related infrastructure. Our hardware inventory, partnerships, operating model, and product roadmap all influence the services we offer.

AI has illuminated commercial relationships across the hosting and IT infrastructure market. Many cloud providers invest in an AI model company, develop their own accelerators, operate the model service, and sell the underlying computing platform. They then use this level of integration as a selling point, offering benefits like a well-engineered service with a single contract, a single billing relationship, and a single support path.

But this model can also make a contract termination or major changes more challenging if the application becomes dependent on proprietary APIs, data services, processors, identity systems, or deployment tooling. Commercial commitments may also influence which infrastructure a provider recommends, making it important to ask how the proposal meets your requirements.

Can your infrastructure provider explain its commercial interests and demonstrate why the proposed architecture fits your workload?

Atlantic.Net is a self-funded, privately held hosting company, and our AI model independence is a key differentiator for our customers. Like any provider, we have a commercial interest in the infrastructure we sell, and we are an NVIDIA Partner Network Cloud Partner. However, we do not own an AI model or proprietary processor, and we have no venture investors or public shareholders with a financial interest in steering customers toward a particular AI stack. 

Why Commercial Relationships Belong in the Architecture Review

Some of the largest AI infrastructure providers openly disclose their commercial relationships.

Amazon says Anthropic uses AWS as its primary training and cloud provider, has made long-term commitments to AWS Trainium, and has received further investment from Amazon.

Microsoft’s April 2026 agreement states that Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and a major shareholder, although OpenAI can now offer products through other cloud providers.

Google Cloud says the same infrastructure supports its TPU systems, Gemini models, consumer AI services, and enterprise products.

These relationships do not prove that a provider’s recommendations are biased. They do show how investment, infrastructure, and product strategy can become closely connected. This matters because those connections may affect how services are integrated, priced, and carried into production.

A tightly integrated platform can still be the right choice. Existing Azure customers may benefit from combining Azure identity, networking, and data services with OpenAI products. AWS customers may benefit from the collaboration between AWS and Anthropic, while Google Cloud customers may prefer to use Gemini and TPUs via Vertex AI.

Our point is not that these choices are wrong. Customers should simply understand which parts of the architecture are portable and which depend on technology controlled by the provider before those dependencies become difficult or expensive to change.

What Our Independent Ownership Changes

Atlantic.Net was founded in 1994 and remains self-funded, privately held, and led by our founder and CEO, Marty Puranik. We do not rely on venture capital or public-market investment.

This independence means we are not under pressure to promote a proprietary AI model, processor, or parent-company platform. Our solutions team can assess public cloud, dedicated servers, GPU servers, bare-metal, private cloud, and managed services based on the workload’s requirements.

We still have commercial interests. We earn revenue from the infrastructure we sell, and our current GPU range is based on NVIDIA hardware. A credible proposal should make those interests clear, explain the alternatives considered, and show how the recommended resources relate to measured workload requirements.

Independence gives us the freedom to say where our services fit and where another provider may be a better choice. A business that needs to operate across dozens of global regions or a broad range of first-party managed services may be better suited to a hyperscaler. A short GPU experiment may work best on an hourly cloud instance, while a regulated application, steady database, or long-running inference service may benefit from predictable monthly infrastructure and direct engineering support.

The workload should determine the platform.

What Technology-Agnostic Means at Atlantic.Net

We use “technology-agnostic” to mean that we start with the customer’s workload rather than a proprietary platform we own. It does not mean we offer every available processor, operating system, framework, or cloud service.

With Atlantic.Net Public Cloud Instances, customers can choose from more than 40 Linux, BSD, and Windows Server images, including Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Fedora, FreeBSD, Arch Linux, and several Windows Server editions. Application compatibility, licensing, security policies, and internal support requirements may narrow that choice, but customers remain in control of their base operating environment.

Our GPU server range currently includes NVIDIA L40S and H100 NVL instances. Usage below the monthly allowance is billed hourly and capped at the published monthly price, providing flexibility for shorter workloads and a predictable ceiling for continuous use.

Customers can install supported frameworks, deploy open-weight models, and run their own applications. They can also use external model APIs without making them part of the underlying hosting platform.

We are equally clear about the limits of our services. Atlantic.Net operates eight data center regions, and our current GPU portfolio is based on NVIDIA hardware. We do not offer the same global footprint or range of proprietary managed services as the largest cloud providers.

A customer that needs another accelerator architecture, deployment across dozens of regions, or a specific first-party AI platform should identify those requirements early. For us, being technology-agnostic means starting with the workload, explaining where our services fit, and being honest when another platform may be more suitable.

How We Approach Infrastructure Design

When we scope an environment, we begin by understanding the workload. That includes how the application behaves, the sensitivity of the data, performance requirements, availability and recovery targets, support needs, budget, and expected growth.

Those requirements shape the architecture. A short-term AI project may suit an hourly GPU instance, while a long-running inference service may benefit from reserved or dedicated GPU capacity with more predictable monthly costs. A business-critical database may need dedicated resources, managed operations, tested backups, and clear recovery procedures. A regulated application may also require specific contractual, technical, and compliance controls.

Depending on the workload, the right solution may be public cloud, dedicated hosting, bare metal, private cloud, GPU infrastructure, or a managed combination of services.

Whatever we recommend, we should be able to explain why it fits. That means demonstrating how the platform meets the customer’s requirements for performance, security, availability, support, cost, and portability, rather than assuming a single platform is always the best choice.

Five Questions We Believe Every Provider Should Answer

Independent ownership does not remove the need for due diligence. Customers should ask the same questions of every infrastructure provider, including Atlantic.Net.

1. Why Does the Architecture Fit the Workload?

The provider should explain the measurements and assumptions behind its recommendation.

CPU, memory, storage, IOPS, network throughput, GPU memory, expected concurrency, and recovery targets should be based on workload data or agreed testing.

A proposal should make clear how the environment was sized and how it will respond if performance requirements or costs change.

2. What Does the Provider Own or Promote?

Customers should understand which chips, models, databases, APIs, control planes, software platforms, support services, and marketplace products are included in the design.

These commercial relationships are not necessarily a problem. What matters is whether they influence the architecture and whether each component has been selected to meet a genuine workload requirement.

We should be prepared to explain the same relationships across our own infrastructure, services, and technology partnerships.

3. Which Parts of the Architecture Are Portable?

The review should identify dependencies across virtual machines, containers, orchestration, storage, networking, identity, databases, and model-serving interfaces.

Customers need to know which components can be moved to another provider with minimal changes and which would require replacement, refactoring, or data conversion.

Complete portability is rarely possible. The aim is to understand the dependencies before they become difficult or expensive to remove.

4. How Will the Bill Change?

A cost estimate should separate the main charges rather than present a single monthly figure without context.

This includes compute, storage, backups, software licenses, support, data transfer, security services, reserved commitments, and overage charges.

We recommend comparing costs for a quiet month, a typical month, and a peak month. Customers should know which charges are fixed, which grow with usage, and which depend on a longer-term commitment.

5. Who Is Responsible for Each Operational Task?

Responsibilities for patching, monitoring, incident response, backups, recovery testing, access reviews, vulnerability management, operating system security, and application security should be clearly documented.

Terms such as “managed hosting” can mean different things across providers. The contract and operating procedures should show where Atlantic.Net’s responsibilities end and where the customer’s begin.

Data Control Includes the Exit Path

At Atlantic.Net, we believe “your data is yours” should be supported by clear technical and contractual terms.

Customers should know who owns their data, who can access it, how it can be exported, which formats are available, how long it is retained, and what happens when the service ends.

Ownership alone does not make a workload portable. A virtual machine or container may be relatively easy to move. Still, an application tied to a proprietary identity service, database API, model endpoint, or deployment platform may require significant engineering work.

A practical exit plan should cover:

• Data export formats.
• Transfer costs and estimated timescales.
• Access to backups.
• Provider-specific APIs and services.
• Required application changes.
• Expected downtime.
• Migration support.
• Data retention and deletion after termination.

The exit process should also be tested. Backups should be restored in a clean environment, data exports should be verified, and deployment procedures should be proven outside the existing platform.

Until those steps have been completed, portability remains an assumption rather than a tested capability.

Independent Ownership Does Not Replace Due Diligence

Our independent ownership is an important differentiator, but it does not remove the need for architecture reviews, security assessments, contract validation, and third-party evidence.

Atlantic.Net publishes information covering SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3 Type II, HIPAA and HITECH, PCI DSS, and NIST 800-53. Customers should confirm that the relevant reports, services, data center locations, and operational controls apply to their proposed environment. Responsibilities should also be clearly assigned, with any remaining gaps documented.

This is particularly important for regulated workloads. We can provide an audited hosting environment, managed controls, and contractual commitments, but customers remain responsible for their applications, users, access policies, data handling, configuration, and overall compliance obligations.

We expect customers to assess Atlantic.Net as carefully as they would any other infrastructure provider. Trust should be based on evidence, not ownership alone.

Our Recommendations Should Explain Themselves

Every Atlantic.Net proposal should explain the assumptions behind the design, why the selected resources fit the workload, where our responsibilities end, and which dependencies or limitations remain.

We should also be able to explain why we have recommended the public cloud, dedicated servers, GPU infrastructure, bare metal, private cloud, or managed services rather than the available alternatives.

Independent ownership does not guarantee the right technical decision. It gives customers a provider whose business is not built around promoting a proprietary model, processor, or software platform. Our recommendation should be based on the workload’s requirements.

Your data is yours. Your ideas are yours. The infrastructure supporting them should preserve your control over what happens next.

Share your current architecture, workload measurements, and operational requirements with the Atlantic.Net solutions team. We will explain the assumptions behind our proposal and help you develop an infrastructure plan that your technical, security, and financial teams can evaluate on its merits.