Networking startup Meter takes a page from the Steve Jobs playbook
(2025/11/19)
- Reference: 1763514107
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/19/meter_steve_jobs_playbook/
- Source link:
"We love moving packets," declared Anil Varanasi, CEO and co-founder of Meter, on a stage overlooking San Francisco Bay at the networking startup's annual networking event. He continued, "This crowd probably knows this intimately, but everything in the world is packets. Regardless of what type of work you do, it is just packets all the way down."
It would only be a few minutes before a container ship traveled by, heading beneath the Bay Bridge. Docker wouldn't call those containers packets, but there's room for abstraction here. Packets, containers, they are all metaphors for moving data.
[1]
Image of container ship seen out the window of Meter Up - Click to enlarge
Networking is a matter of some concern for Varanasi, who warned that the number of networking engineers is declining even as the number of networks, devices, and the amount of data is rising. Meter aims to compensate with better networking, in part through AI, though the company wisely minimizes its use of that term. It's promising autonomous networks by 2026.
"If networking gets better, compute gets better," Varanasi said. "So we're building models from the ground up to do the three things that are core to networking, which are designing networks, configuring networks, and managing networks."
Meter's leader may not have captured the look or manner of Apple's storied leader Steve Jobs – no black turtlenecks here – but his message came straight out of Cupertino. Just as Jobs [2]cited Xerox PARC visionary Alan Kay's observation that "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware," so too did Varanasi.
[3]
The decade-old privately held company is making itself in the enterprise image of Apple's own-the-stack business model with a vertically integrated networking-as-a-service offering that spans hardware, firmware, operating system, software, APIs, and AI models.
[4]
[5]
It's competing against the likes of Arista, Palo Alto Networks, and Cisco – a campaign recently reinforced with [6]$170 million in Series C funding .
You can hear the ghost of Jobs in Varanasi's remarks about Meter's networking kit. "We do not believe hardware should be commoditized," he said. "Hardware should be beautiful. It should feel like cathedrals and circuits and materials that make sense."
[7]
That's not how most people talk about firewalls, network access points, switches, and the like, given that these products tend to be out of sight when deployed and unsightly. Networking kit does not lend itself to the precious packaging, shiny surfaces, bespoke colors, and exotic materials that go into Apple's consumer loot.
And yet, Joshua Markell, head of hardware, stood on stage effusing about Meter Switches, insisting that hardware should be beautiful and recounting how he fought to shift a port position by 2 mm to make it align better.
"I want people to look at things like this and think, 'Meter does the little things so you can trust that they do the big things,'" he said.
[8]
Meter's hardware fetishism, or perhaps fanaticism, is reassuring at a time when AI slop has eroded standards and expectations. But it's also odd given that Meter's customers don't actually purchase its hardware – they pay a monthly networking service subscription fee based on the square footage of their locally installed, cloud-managed gear. Meter's kit may feel like a cathedral but its customers are visitors rather than owners.
When it came to answering hard questions, Varanasi was unable to match the cantankerous Apple co-founder's infamous edge. On stage later that morning, Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe asked him, "Do you think AI is some sort of bubble?"
"I'm not answering that question," Varanasi dodged with a smile, amid knowing laughter from the audience.
[9]Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold
[10]'Largest-ever' cloud DDoS attack pummels Azure with 3.64B packets per second
[11]Anthropic is at the heart of the latest billion-dollar circular AI investment bonanza
[12]Linus Torvalds is OK with vibe coding as long as it's not used for anything that matters
For Metcalfe, that networking-as-a-service business model is what makes Meter interesting. During the lunch break, he told The Register that until Meter arrived, it wasn't clear that businesses would embrace networking-as-a-service.
Then we asked Metcalfe to answer the question Varanasi declined.
There's definitely a bubble, Metcalfe replied. The only question is when it will pop. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/11/18/container_ship.jpg
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfTXYa36f4
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.meter.com/blog/series-c
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/cloudflare_outage/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/17/biggest_cloud_ddos_attack_azure/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/anthropic_microsoft_nvidia_ai_deals/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/linus_torvalds_vibe_coding/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
It would only be a few minutes before a container ship traveled by, heading beneath the Bay Bridge. Docker wouldn't call those containers packets, but there's room for abstraction here. Packets, containers, they are all metaphors for moving data.
[1]
Image of container ship seen out the window of Meter Up - Click to enlarge
Networking is a matter of some concern for Varanasi, who warned that the number of networking engineers is declining even as the number of networks, devices, and the amount of data is rising. Meter aims to compensate with better networking, in part through AI, though the company wisely minimizes its use of that term. It's promising autonomous networks by 2026.
"If networking gets better, compute gets better," Varanasi said. "So we're building models from the ground up to do the three things that are core to networking, which are designing networks, configuring networks, and managing networks."
Meter's leader may not have captured the look or manner of Apple's storied leader Steve Jobs – no black turtlenecks here – but his message came straight out of Cupertino. Just as Jobs [2]cited Xerox PARC visionary Alan Kay's observation that "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware," so too did Varanasi.
[3]
The decade-old privately held company is making itself in the enterprise image of Apple's own-the-stack business model with a vertically integrated networking-as-a-service offering that spans hardware, firmware, operating system, software, APIs, and AI models.
[4]
[5]
It's competing against the likes of Arista, Palo Alto Networks, and Cisco – a campaign recently reinforced with [6]$170 million in Series C funding .
You can hear the ghost of Jobs in Varanasi's remarks about Meter's networking kit. "We do not believe hardware should be commoditized," he said. "Hardware should be beautiful. It should feel like cathedrals and circuits and materials that make sense."
[7]
That's not how most people talk about firewalls, network access points, switches, and the like, given that these products tend to be out of sight when deployed and unsightly. Networking kit does not lend itself to the precious packaging, shiny surfaces, bespoke colors, and exotic materials that go into Apple's consumer loot.
And yet, Joshua Markell, head of hardware, stood on stage effusing about Meter Switches, insisting that hardware should be beautiful and recounting how he fought to shift a port position by 2 mm to make it align better.
"I want people to look at things like this and think, 'Meter does the little things so you can trust that they do the big things,'" he said.
[8]
Meter's hardware fetishism, or perhaps fanaticism, is reassuring at a time when AI slop has eroded standards and expectations. But it's also odd given that Meter's customers don't actually purchase its hardware – they pay a monthly networking service subscription fee based on the square footage of their locally installed, cloud-managed gear. Meter's kit may feel like a cathedral but its customers are visitors rather than owners.
When it came to answering hard questions, Varanasi was unable to match the cantankerous Apple co-founder's infamous edge. On stage later that morning, Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe asked him, "Do you think AI is some sort of bubble?"
"I'm not answering that question," Varanasi dodged with a smile, amid knowing laughter from the audience.
[9]Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold
[10]'Largest-ever' cloud DDoS attack pummels Azure with 3.64B packets per second
[11]Anthropic is at the heart of the latest billion-dollar circular AI investment bonanza
[12]Linus Torvalds is OK with vibe coding as long as it's not used for anything that matters
For Metcalfe, that networking-as-a-service business model is what makes Meter interesting. During the lunch break, he told The Register that until Meter arrived, it wasn't clear that businesses would embrace networking-as-a-service.
Then we asked Metcalfe to answer the question Varanasi declined.
There's definitely a bubble, Metcalfe replied. The only question is when it will pop. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/11/18/container_ship.jpg
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfTXYa36f4
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.meter.com/blog/series-c
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aR1O6WZy2RePRQcXUk3kvAAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/cloudflare_outage/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/17/biggest_cloud_ddos_attack_azure/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/anthropic_microsoft_nvidia_ai_deals/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/18/linus_torvalds_vibe_coding/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
cd
Cathedral... tithing
Cathedral... tithing
Bebu sa Ware
Only 10% — you would be lucky.
West Coast New Age …
Bebu sa Ware
stating the bleeding bloody obvious as though it were some deep and meaningful secret of life, the Universe and everything.
Everything is packets ? Right. They are called atoms, molecules, electrons and other fundamental particles or quanta.
Democritus, Dalton, Planck et al were there long before these crypto·hippies pitching a low level scam: Give us your money in annual instalments and we will mis ·manage your networks "better" than you currently do yourself or whatever managed services you currently use,
The recent Cloudflare cock·up might make one pause before handing the keys to one's kingdom to the grand vizier.
sanmigueelbeer
stood on stage effusing about Meter Switches
Made by [1]EnGenius Technologies .
[1] https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/2AVVV-MW05/5793590.pdf
Walk away...
when someone adds 'as a service' to something, mentions subscriptions or lauds AI.