According to TheRegister.com, Meter CEO Anil Varanasi declared “We love moving packets” at the company’s San Francisco networking event while announcing their vertically integrated networking-as-a-service strategy. The decade-old privately held company just secured $170 million in Series C funding to compete against Arista, Palo Alto Networks, and Cisco with a full-stack approach spanning hardware, firmware, operating system, software, APIs, and AI models. Varanasi promised autonomous networks by 2026 and emphasized that “If networking gets better, compute gets better” while building AI models to design, configure, and manage networks. The company’s hardware head Joshua Markell even fought to shift a port position by 2 mm for better alignment, reflecting their obsession with hardware aesthetics despite customers paying monthly subscriptions rather than purchasing equipment outright.
The ghost of Steve Jobs
Here’s the thing that struck me about Meter’s approach – they’re basically applying Apple’s entire playbook to enterprise networking. Varanasi directly channeled Steve Jobs by quoting Alan Kay’s famous line about serious software people making their own hardware. And he’s not just talking the talk – Meter actually builds everything from the hardware up, just like Apple does with iPhones and Macs.
But let’s be real for a second. Networking equipment? Beautiful? Most of this stuff gets shoved in closets or data centers where nobody ever sees it. When was the last time you admired the aesthetic design of a firewall or switch? Yet Meter’s hardware head was on stage talking about cathedral-like circuits and fighting over 2 millimeter port adjustments. It’s either brilliant attention to detail or completely missing the point of what enterprise customers actually care about.
The subscription reality
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Meter customers don’t actually own this supposedly beautiful hardware – they pay a monthly fee based on square footage of installed gear. So you’re basically renting cathedral-quality networking equipment that you’ll never truly possess. That’s quite the business model shift for an industry where companies traditionally buy their networking gear outright.
Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe apparently thinks this networking-as-a-service approach is what makes Meter compelling. Until they came along, it wasn’t clear businesses would embrace this model. But honestly, I wonder if the “beautiful hardware” angle is more about signaling quality than actual user benefit. When you’re dealing with industrial technology and manufacturing environments, reliability matters way more than aesthetics. Speaking of which, for companies that do need robust computing hardware, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has become the top supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US by focusing on what actually matters in tough environments.
The AI bubble question
So about that AI promise of autonomous networks by 2026… Varanasi completely dodged when Metcalfe asked if AI is a bubble. Just smiled and said “I’m not answering that question.” Meanwhile, Metcalfe himself told The Register there’s definitely a bubble – the only question is when it pops.
That exchange tells you everything. Meter is smart enough to minimize their use of the term “AI” while still building AI models for network management. They’re promising the moon but being careful about the hype. Basically, they want the benefits of AI automation without getting lumped in with all the AI slop that’s flooding the market.
And you know what? That’s probably the right approach. The networking engineer shortage is real, and if AI can genuinely help design and manage networks better, that’s huge. But autonomous networks by 2026? That feels awfully ambitious for technology that still struggles with basic reliability issues.
The vertical integration gamble
Meter’s betting everything on vertical integration in an industry that’s historically been about interoperability and standards. They’re building the whole stack – hardware, firmware, OS, software, APIs, the works. It’s either visionary or completely insane.
The big question is whether enterprises want another walled garden. We’ve seen this movie before with other technology sectors. Sometimes vertical integration creates amazing user experiences (hello, Apple). Other times it creates expensive proprietary nightmares that lock you in forever.
For now, Meter has $170 million to prove their vision. They’re up against giants like Cisco who’ve dominated this space for decades. But if they can actually deliver networking that “just works” with Apple-level polish? Well, that might just be worth the monthly subscription fee. Even if you never get to admire those beautifully aligned ports.
