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For many startups, infrastructure decisions are mostly about performance, pricing, and developer experience. For Melious AI, they are also about trust.Melious AI is a German startup building a European AI platform around privacy, transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty. Its core product gives companies an OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible endpoint, so teams can switch by changing the base URL rather than rebuilding their applications from scratch. Behind that endpoint, Melious connects open-weight models, European infrastructure providers, and additional tools such as web search and code execution in a sovereign environment.We spoke with Dean Fünffrock, Co-Founder & CPO, and Marc Hornbacher, Co-Founder & CMO, about why they started Melious, what sovereignty means beyond a marketing slogan, and why the team decided to move its CDN and DNS layer to Gcore."We make European AI infrastructure actually usable"Dima Maslennikov, Gcore: Dean, Marc, thanks for joining. Let's start with a short introduction. Who are you, and what is Melious AI building?Dean Fünffrock, Melious AI: I'm Dean, Co-Founder and CPO at Melious AI. We are a startup based in Germany, and what we build is a way to connect the software and infrastructure that already exists in Europe and make it usable and accessible for companies.At the core, we provide an inference service. It works through an endpoint that is compatible with what many developers already use with OpenAI or Anthropic. In practice, that means companies can switch quite easily by changing the base URL.But we are not only building around technical compatibility. Our values are privacy first, sustainability, and transparency. We try to work with data centers that mostly use green energy, and where that is not fully possible, we compensate through projects. We also want users to know what they are getting: which model was used, which provider was used, what energy was consumed, and what CO₂ was estimated for a request.On top of the API, we also have a chat interface so that people can use the product without coding. And we are expanding with tools that AI applications often need, such as web search and code execution. The important part is that these tools are also hosted on sovereign infrastructure. We do not want to rely on Google APIs or Brave APIs for that.Dima: And your role specifically?Dean: I'm CPO, but at our stage, that means a lot of things. Right now, I mainly work on front-end development and talk to customers about what they need, what features matter, what does not matter, and where the product has the biggest potential.Marc Hornbacher, Melious AI: I'm Marc, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer. I take care of the marketing side at Melious. I'm also still at university and finishing my bachelor's degree this semester. After the summer, Melious will be my full focus.From a privacy problem to a companyDima: How did the company start?Dean: The project started before the company was officially founded. I worked with our CEO, Simon, at another company in our city. He was building a solution that needed AI integration, but it had to be really private. There was no solution where we could be fully sure that no data was exposed to US authorities, logged, or used for training.That was the beginning. We started with brainstorming sessions, met in the city, talked about the idea, and later brought in Tom, our COO. Simon, Tom, and I went to the same high school, which was also quite technical, so the idea resonated with us. Marc and I knew each other from making music a few years ago. That is how the team came together.We founded the company in September 2025. Since then, we have been building the product and raising money.Dima: Where are you now in terms of traction?Dean: We have a live product with over 300 registered users, and we've seen especially strong growth recently — driven in part by events like the Fable shutdown pushing teams toward sovereign infrastructure.Dima: What has been the main acquisition channel so far?Marc: LinkedIn and events. A lot of it comes from talking to people in person. We are also about to start Google Ads, but until now it has mostly been LinkedIn and direct conversations at events."If you work with sensitive data, you should care where it goes"Dima: Let's step back to the problem. What is the core issue you are solving?Dean: AI is one of the biggest topics right now, and it will be integrated into almost everything. But if you deal with sensitive data, you really need to care about where that data goes, who is involved in processing it, and what happens to what you put in.With many established solutions, companies face uncertainty. Data may be processed in environments where they do not fully control legal exposure. For example, there are questions around whether data can be accessed under the US Cloud Act if US-owned cloud companies are involved.For us, that is the problem: companies want to use AI, but they need to know what happens to their data and who has control over the infrastructure.Dima: Marc, who are the customers with this problem?Marc: Basically, every company has to think about privacy and data. But some industries feel it much more strongly. Medtech, fintech, defense tech, govtech — these are obvious examples. Any company that works with sensitive data and cannot compromise on privacy is relevant.At the same time, we currently focus a lot on startups because they are easier to reach at our stage. We can talk to them faster, learn faster, and understand where the product fits best.Dean: The challenge with industries like medtech is that there are many compliance requirements. As a startup, you cannot just rush into that. It will take time. But in the long run, those areas are exactly where a solution like ours can have the biggest impact.Sovereignty is not one thing. It has layers.Dima: Sovereignty is a hot topic, but it is also becoming a marketing keyword. What does sovereignty actually mean for you?Dean: For us, in AI, sovereignty has three layers.The first layer is the model provider or the lab that trains the model. The second layer is the hardware the model runs on. The third layer is the entity that operates the hardware, provides the service, and controls the data center.The part we are solving is control. We want to know what is happening in the infrastructure we use, and we want to be able to tell our customers what is happening to their data.That is the core of sovereignty for us. It is not just about saying "European." It is about being able to understand and control the chain.Why Melious AI moved CDN and DNS to GcoreDima: And that is also why you decided to move to Gcore?Dean: Yes. We needed to make sure there was no US entity involved in the chain.So we did some research and checked whether there was a provider that could give us what we needed. We found Gcore, and it provided everything we needed.Dima: So for you, it was not only a technical infrastructure decision. It was part of the sovereignty requirement.Dean: Exactly.What comes next for Melious AIDima: What are your plans now? Are you looking for customers, investors, partners?Dean: Our primary goal is to reach as many potential customers as possible who struggle with privacy and work with data where privacy really matters. We are looking for companies that do not want to compromise, that want to know what happens to their data, and that want to be sure it is safe.Fundraising is a topic for us. We are well set for the moment, but we are preparing for a larger seed round toward the end of the year, and we are always open to discussions with the right partners.What we really want is customers, feedback, and connections — especially into government organizations. We already got some insights into healthtech, but govtech would be very interesting for us as well.The main call to action is simple: try our service. See how easy it is to switch. Give us feedback if something is not as expected, if you need a feature, or if there is a use case we should understand better.The infrastructure question behind European AIMelious AI is building in a market where "sovereign AI" can easily become a slogan. But for the team, the concept is concrete: who trains the model, where it runs, who operates the infrastructure, and under which legal framework the data is processed.That is why the choice of Gcore for CDN and DNS was not just a backend decision.It was part of the same product logic that shapes Melious itself: if companies are expected to trust AI with sensitive data, the infrastructure behind that AI has to be explainable, controllable, and aligned with European requirements.For startups, this is a reminder that infrastructure is no longer invisible. In AI, it is part of the product, part of the compliance story, and part of the trust users are being asked to place in the technology.Gcore offers global infrastructure built for exactly this kind of challenge. If you're a startup that can't afford ambiguity in your infrastructure stack, explore what's possible at gcore.com/infrastructure-for-startups.

E-commerce is moving fast — and the conversations at E-commerce Berlin Expo reflected just how much has changed in the last few years.Now that the event is over, here are four things I took away from speaking with key players across the industry, as Gcore's e-commerce GTM lead.1. CDN is no longer simply technical jargonMost decision-makers across various business functions are aware of the benefits CDN can bring to their brands: multimedia optimization, reduced manual workload, faster load times, and much more. Just a couple of years ago, you would only hear about this topic in enterprise boardrooms. Now, it's becoming part of a toolkit among SMBs and agencies — and demand is growing exponentially.2. Infrastructure has maturedTeams have already amassed a colossal amount of data, and know exactly which pages trigger a purchase decision. For example, very few brands observed material performance degradation across critical flows (home, product, checkout) during the most recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. High-peak discount events no longer expose weaknesses as easily as they did a few years ago. Preparation cycles have become more mature, with even marketing teams treating infrastructure as a strategic priority rather than an afterthought.3. Cybersecurity is a must-haveThe most striking contrast was the difference I saw in the approach to cybersecurity — a total shift from five years ago. What was a long-tail risk acceptance (if it happens, then it happens) has now become part of a proactive risk-hedging strategy, e.g., how can we become more resilient? Decision-makers across all functions recognize the multitude of L3-L7 attacks. SQL injections, API abuse, credential stuffing, and outright payment fraud were all on the radar across operational and technical teams this year.4. Data sovereignty has a price problemEnterprise teams are all-in, embracing the EU data sovereignty approach. Compliance and DevOps have a robust understanding of the types of data they operate with, where the data travels, and who has access to it. But mid-tier and long-tail still prioritize price and accept the risks due to a lack of 360° full-stack solutions on the EU market. On top of this, the price factor still dominates — even the most regulatory forward-looking teams can become hesitant if the price tag for an EU switch becomes substantial.Powering e-commerce: Gcore at Berlin ExpoFor more insights from the event, take a look at this short video of us in conversation with e-commerce industry professionals about the role of AI and Cloud in e-commerce infrastructure.And check out our in-person Masterclass from the Expo, if you're looking for even more insights into e-commerce success and why infrastructure is the foundation.EU-sovereign infrastructure, built for e-commerceAll of these conversations and insights reinforced something we think about a lot at Gcore — particularly around data sovereignty. The demand is real, but price and fragmentation are still holding teams back. That's exactly why we've built a full-stack, EU-sovereign solution for e-commerce and retail that doesn't ask you to compromise on performance or cost to get there. If that's a challenge your team is facing, get in touch.Chat to us about your e-commerce needs

At Gcore, delivering exceptional streaming experiences to users across our global network is at the heart of what we do. We're excited to share how we're taking our CDN performance monitoring to new heights through our partnership with AVEQ and their innovative Surfmeter solution.Operating a massive global network spanning 210 points of presence across six continents comes with unique challenges. While our globally distributed caching infrastructure already ensures optimal performance for end-users, we recognized the need for deeper insights into the complex interactions between applications and our underlying network. We needed to move beyond traditional server-side monitoring to truly understand what our customers' users experience in the real world.Real-world performance visibilityThat's where AVEQ's Surfmeter comes in. We're now using Surfmeter to gain unprecedented visibility into our network performance through automated, active measurements that simulate actual streaming video quality, exactly as end-users experience it.This isn't about checking boxes or reviewing server logs. It's about measuring what users see on their screens at home. With Surfmeter, our engineering teams can identify and resolve potential bottlenecks or suboptimal configurations, and collaborate more effectively with our customers to continuously improve Quality of Experience (QoE).How we use SurfmeterAVEQ helps us simulate and analyze real-world scenarios where users access different video streams. Their software runs both on network nodes close to our data center CDN caches and at selected end-user locations with genuine ISP connections.What sets Surfmeter apart is its authentic approach: it opens video streams from the same platforms and players that end-users rely on, ensuring measurements truly represent real-world conditions. Unlike monitoring solutions that simply check stream availability, Surfmeter doesn't make assumptions or use third-party playback engines. Instead, it precisely replicates how video players request and decode data served from our CDN.Rapid issue resolutionWhen performance issues arise, Surfmeter provides our engineers with the deep insights needed to quickly identify root causes. Whether the problem lies within our CDN, with peering partners, or on the server side, we can pinpoint it with precision.By monitoring individual video requests, including headers and timings, and combining this data with our internal logging, we gain complete visibility and observability into our entire streaming pipeline. Surfmeter can also perform ping and traceroute tests from the same device, measuring video QoE, allowing our engineers to access all collected data through one API rather than manually connecting to devices for troubleshooting.Competitive benchmarking and future capabilitiesSurfmeter also enables us to benchmark our performance against other services and network providers. By deploying Surfmeter probes at customer-like locations, we can measure streaming from any source via different ISPs.This partnership reflects our commitment to transparency and data-driven service excellence. By leveraging AVEQ's Surfmeter solution, we ensure that our customers receive the best possible streaming performance, backed by objective, end-user-centric insights.Learn more about Gcore CDN