Barnaby launches Machine0: CLI for persistent agent VMs, priced from $0.013/hr
Y Combinator S26 startup Machine0 offers on-demand cloud VMs optimized for long-running AI agents, with per-minute billing and GPU options.
What to know
- Machine0 offers per-minute billing for persistent cloud VMs starting at $0.013/hour for CPU and $0.836/hour for GPU instances, targeting long-running AI agent workloads.
- The service provides CLI and MCP-based control, reproducible builds via NixOS/Ubuntu, and 99.99% uptime across five regions with static IPs and HTTPS endpoints.
- The timing targets a shift in agent workloads from ephemeral batch jobs to continuous multi-hour processes that benefit from persistent state and snapshots.
Barnaby Founder of Machine0
The record 1 articles and posts · last 30 days
What people are saying 7 voices from 1 site · verbatim
- Aug 21
-
No CRIU. Snapshots are at the disk layer, not RAM.`machine0 suspend` takes a full disk snapshot and tears down the compute; you keep paying only for storage. `machine0 start` restores the disk and cold-boots the VM from it. So processes restart, they don't resume mid-execution. Practically: anything that survives a reboot survives a suspend.
- Aug 19
-
This looks useful. The per-minute billing on persistent VMs solves a real gap between serverless and reserved instances.One question on the agent fleet pattern you described: when a pilot agent delegates to dozens of sub-agents across separate VMs, how do you track what the whole job actually cost? The VM minutes are visible, but the API calls…
- Aug 18
-
Does snapshot/suspend/resume keep processes/RAM alive - or do you need to re-start processes/reload stuff into RAM? How does that work under the hood (CRIU?) and how fast is it?
-
> People run a pilot agent that scopes work and delegates it to sub-agents, each on its own VM: shape a project with the pilot, and the workers implement it and open PRs. One customer runs hundreds of machines at once, spun up and torn down from the CLI.Are people spawning VMs for every tool call? If so, would love to understand why so, and why…
-
>machine0 provides on-demand cloud virtual machines accessible via a command-line interface and web dashboard. VMs run on DigitalOcean infrastructure.Well, given DigitalOceans already inflated prices, this certainly won't be cheap.
-
Basic question:What are you doing here that my agent couldn't do with: AWS, GCP, Hetzner, DigitialOcean?Quick read is this is some simple api abstraction? or you're even brokering that compute? Which i would want, why?
-
When you say suspendible, do you mean that I could make a VM, configure it by installing packages and libraries, then pause it?And resume it later with the full disk ready to go? No billing during the inbetween time?That’d be huge, but seems wild. How can you economically keep the storage between active sessions?