Boat offers persistent Ubuntu virtual machines designed to host long-running AI agents, aimed at developers building "agent factories" that need to fan work out across many isolated environments. Each sandbox is a full Linux VM with SSH and SCP access, Docker inside the VM, a dedicated IPv6 or IPv4, a 60fps virtual desktop, and fast disk-level forking from a snapshot, with Docker, VS Code, Chrome, the GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun pre-installed. That shape matters because most popular sandbox services run restricted containers under gVisor or similar, which breaks workflows that need root, nested virtualization, or stateful background processes.
The launch leans on price and scale. Self-serve accounts can run up to 2,000 concurrent sandboxes , and pricing is billed by the second with a $20 monthly minimum that buys about 555 hours of 4 vCPU / 8 GB VM time, after a 7-day free trial . The team positions boat against Modal sandboxes in particular, claiming full VMs instead of gVisor at a fraction of the per-hour cost, with Docker and a desktop included . The launch tweet highlights a video that Claude designed and rendered on a cluster of boat VMs, a demo of the parallel compute use case the product is pitched for.
Boat is built by Anicet Nougaret, who posted the launch , and according to its Y Combinator profile was founded in 2024 by Kirill and Anicet Nougaret, with a three-person team based in Paris . For founders and operators evaluating where to run agent swarms, browser automations, or build loops that need real machines rather than ephemeral containers, boat is worth a direct comparison on cost per hour and on whether a persistent VM with snapshot and fork fits the workload.
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Priya Venkatesh8d ago
the fact that claude rendered the launch video on your own infra is a flex i actually respect. way better than another figma mockup set to lofi.
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Tomas Król8d ago
2k concurrent self-serve is a bold number to put in writing. screenshotting this tweet for when someone spins up 1999 and tries to mine monero.
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kenji8d ago
'super low prices' is doing a lot of load bearing work in this tweet. put a number next to it or i'm assuming it's gpu-markup pricing in a trenchcoat.
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Adaeze O.8d ago
poked around for 5 min, where are the webhooks for VM lifecycle events? also what are the rate limits on the control plane before you throttle me.
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Ravi S.8d ago
docs look surprisingly thorough for a day-one launch. tell me there's a terraform provider and i'm sold.
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Matteo R.8d ago
how long does a cold boot actually take? agents waiting 40s for a desktop to come up is where the dream dies.
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Yusra W.8d ago
this will probably be one of the last infra products pitched to humans. in 8 months the buyer is an agent reading your docs page at 3am.
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Linnea Hagström8d ago
the cut from browser to desktop to the rendered scene around 0:14 is really clean. editor earned their keep on this one.
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Omar B.8d ago
every week a new sandbox-for-agents launches and every week the agents still cant reliably click a cookie banner. feels like we are paving a road to nowhere.
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Boat offers persistent Ubuntu virtual machines designed to host long-running AI agents, aimed at developers building "agent factories" that need to fan work out across many isolated environments. Each sandbox is a full Linux VM with SSH and SCP access, Docker inside the VM, a dedicated IPv6 or IPv4, a 60fps virtual desktop, and fast disk-level forking from a snapshot, with Docker, VS Code, Chrome, the GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun pre-installed. That shape matters because most popular sandbox services run restricted containers under gVisor or similar, which breaks workflows that need root, nested virtualization, or stateful background processes. The launch leans on price and scale. Self-serve accounts can run up to 2,000 concurrent sandboxes , and pricing is billed by the second with a $20 monthly minimum that buys about 555 hours of 4 vCPU / 8 GB VM time, after a 7-day free trial . The team positions boat against Modal sandboxes in particular, claiming full VMs instead of gVisor at a fraction of the per-hour cost, with Docker and a desktop included . The launch tweet highlights a video that Claude designed and rendered on a cluster of boat VMs, a demo of the parallel compute use case the product is pitched for. Boat is built by Anicet Nougaret, who posted the launch , and according to its Y Combinator profile was founded in 2024 by Kirill and Anicet Nougaret, with a three-person team based in Paris . For founders and operators evaluating where to run agent swarms, browser automations, or build loops that need real machines rather than ephemeral containers, boat is worth a direct comparison on cost per hour and on whether a persistent VM with snapshot and fork fits the workload.
Comments (9)
the fact that claude rendered the launch video on your own infra is a flex i actually respect. way better than another figma mockup set to lofi.
2k concurrent self-serve is a bold number to put in writing. screenshotting this tweet for when someone spins up 1999 and tries to mine monero.
'super low prices' is doing a lot of load bearing work in this tweet. put a number next to it or i'm assuming it's gpu-markup pricing in a trenchcoat.
poked around for 5 min, where are the webhooks for VM lifecycle events? also what are the rate limits on the control plane before you throttle me.
docs look surprisingly thorough for a day-one launch. tell me there's a terraform provider and i'm sold.
how long does a cold boot actually take? agents waiting 40s for a desktop to come up is where the dream dies.
this will probably be one of the last infra products pitched to humans. in 8 months the buyer is an agent reading your docs page at 3am.
the cut from browser to desktop to the rendered scene around 0:14 is really clean. editor earned their keep on this one.
every week a new sandbox-for-agents launches and every week the agents still cant reliably click a cookie banner. feels like we are paving a road to nowhere.