Velda’s Cloud Infrastructure Strategy: Key Findings
Cloud budgets are rising, but so are workflow bottlenecks.
As machine learning and data-heavy workflows grow more sophisticated, the infrastructure meant to support them often becomes the bottleneck.
Instead of speeding up delivery, it slows developers down.
In fact, an estimated 30% of total cloud budgets are blown on unused or misconfigured resources, according to Data Stack Hub.
No one wants to waste money, but that's not the only problem.
The real toll of these inefficiencies lands on developer productivity, as teams struggle with:
- Workflow orchestration
- Container dependency management
- Local resource constraints
These challenges have fueled demand for infrastructure tools that are cloud-native, scalable, and built around real developer needs rather than rigid assumptions.
Velda, a developer-first cloud infrastructure company, is addressing this gap by rethinking how workflows are built, deployed, and scaled.
In this interview with DesignRush, Velda Founder Chuan Qiu shares the principles behind vrun, the company’s lightweight workflow system.
It's designed to support everyone from open-source users to enterprise infrastructure teams.
That way, engineers and developers aren't up against unnecessary hurdles, and companies can make real progress.
Who Is Chuan Qiu?
Qiu is the founder of Velda, where he specializes in building custom cloud infrastructure designed for scalability and efficiency. Previously Head of Core Infrastructure at Nuro, he led workflow orchestration and data management frameworks.
With over a decade of experience, Qiu focuses on solving complex technical challenges that help engineering teams move faster and scale smarter.
1. Don’t Treat Cloud Cost as Just a Line Item
When engineering teams evaluate infrastructure platforms, cost is always part of the conversation, even when it’s not openly acknowledged.
“They care about cost," Qiu says.
"... Not just the cost of the platform itself, but also including the total hardware (cloud) cost and operation costs."
Even teams that claim performance is their top priority tend to avoid solutions perceived as excessive.
“They will never buy equipment they deem luxury, even if it provides better performance in some cases,” Qiu adds.
Velda’s approach reflects this reality.
Instead of forcing teams into heavyweight infrastructure decisions, the platform emphasizes efficiency.
In turn, it helps organizations reduce cloud spend, operational overhead, and wasted engineering time.
By aligning infrastructure performance with economic reality, Velda meets teams where real purchasing decisions are made.
2. Remove Workflow Friction Before It Becomes a Blocker
The idea behind vrun emerged from firsthand experience.
“We built our own workflow so that [users] can submit [jobs] that run scalably in my previous role,” Qiu says.
“We started Velda to remove all [tech stack assumptions] and [make] it a general solution.”
One of the biggest pain points was container dependency management.
Engineering teams spent significant time maintaining versions, handling upgrades, and troubleshooting incompatibilities.
“We spent huge effort maintaining dependency versions and upgrades,” Qiu notes.
“It’s non-trivial to set up [new distributed workflows].”
Local development environments added another layer of friction. Developers were often limited by their machines, slowing experimentation and iteration.
“Developers often get blocked or slowed down by the limited resources on their dev machine,” Qiu says.
While many engineers recognize these inefficiencies, adoption of new tooling remains cautious.
“Developers tend to agree there’s room to improve," Qiu says.
"But they may continue to follow the same process just to get current work out the door, unless it’s blocking."
Velda’s solution is designed to be lightweight enough to adopt early before friction becomes a hard stop.
3. Build Modular Infrastructure That Earns Long-Term Trust
Velda supports open-source users, hosted cloud clients, and enterprise teams, each with different needs and expectations.
“Our open-source focus on all capabilities to scale in a cluster, while enterprise/hosted adds another layer of governance,” Qiu says.
To manage this complexity without slowing development, Velda structured its platform so that hosted and enterprise offerings consume the open-source core through stable APIs.
Dependency injection keeps components modular, minimizing divergence and maintaining velocity.
But technical architecture alone isn’t enough.
“Developers’ top pain point is changing all the time,” Qiu explains.
Teams adapt to persistent problems, stop complaining, and shift focus as priorities change. That’s why Velda invests heavily in trust and visibility.
“Building a trusted brand is important, especially for infrastructure products, including continuous engagement,” Qiu says.
When a developer’s P0 problem eventually aligns with what Velda solves, the goal is to be the first solution they think of.
Making Developer-First Infrastructure Accessible
Velda’s cloud-native, developer-first positioning shapes everything from onboarding to community engagement.
Developers often don’t have permission to deploy new infrastructure tools inside enterprise environments, even open-source ones.
“That’s why we have the hosted so they can actually try it in the lowest friction way,” Qiu says.
Velda also creates tutorials around specific, everyday engineering problems, helping developers relate their work to the platform’s value.
The result?
Infrastructure teams actually want to adopt, and leadership supports.
For businesses looking to modernize their cloud infrastructure without sacrificing developer velocity, explore top cloud infrastructure companies on DesignRush.
