The AWS Developers Podcast The future of fast builds: inside Depot's cloud-native CI/CD platform
Aug 22, 2025
Jacob Gillespie, Co-founder and CTO of Depot, shares insights on revolutionizing CI/CD with lightning-fast builds. He discusses achieving up to 40x speed improvements using AWS services and innovative caching techniques. Dive into the intricacies of Depot’s architecture, including EC2 instance management and distributed storage solutions. Jacob also highlights effective RAM caching methods and the transition to MicroVMs, addressing challenges in macOS deployments and the importance of observability tools for optimizing workflows. A treasure trove for developers seeking speed and efficiency!
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Why Depot Started
- Jacob Gillespie founded Depot after fighting slow CI as a platform engineer for years.
- A first customer saw a 40x speedup, cutting ~1 hour builds to minutes.
Cloud Servers Beat Ephemeral Runners
- Moving builds to specialized EC2 instances gives full control over CPU, memory and network for faster, predictable builds.
- This also eases ARM builds by using Graviton instances instead of slow emulation.
Choose Dedicated VMs For Strong Isolation
- Use a dedicated EC2 instance per build when you need strong isolation and predictable performance.
- Leverage the cloud provider's isolation guarantees instead of multi-tenant containers when strict separation matters.