Depot

Depot (YC Winter 2023) moves Docker image builds off your laptop and CI runners onto managed BuildKit VMs in AWS — 16 CPUs, 32GB RAM, and a persistent 50GB NVMe cache SSD per builder, with native Intel and Arm machines so multi-platform images build without QEMU emulation. depot build is a literal drop-in replacement for docker build, and the shared team cache means a teammate's build results are instantly reusable. The company raised a $4.1M seed (Aug 2024) and a $10M Series A (Mar 2026), backed by Felicis, YC, and Docker founder Solomon Hykes. Beyond builds: managed GitHub Actions runners (up to 10x faster), a remote cache backend for Bazel/Go/Gradle/Turborepo/sccache, a Build API for platforms, and the Depot Registry launched in 2025.

The honest caveat: it is usage-billed compute, so teams with enormous build volumes should model costs against self-hosted runners — the speed is real but not free. Builds run on Depot's AWS infrastructure, which is a data-residency consideration for regulated industries (self-hosted builders in your own cloud account are offered as the answer). Depot CI is newer and less proven than the container builds product.

Sign up at depot.dev/start (60-minute free tier). Install the CLI via brew install depot/tap/depot (macOS) or the install script (Linux), then replace docker build with depot build -t repo/image:tag ..