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Cochran is automating cloud commitment management so FinOps teams stop relying on dashboards that still leave humans to execute savings.
Chris Cochran is co-founder and chief executive of ProsperOps, an automated FinOps company founded in Austin, Texas, in 2018. He started the company with Erik Carlin and Chris Kuehl to turn cloud savings recommendations into executed commitment management.
Founding ProsperOps Before FinOps Had a Name
When the co-founders established ProsperOps in 2018, FinOps was not yet a defined practice. PR Newswire later described ProsperOps as a pioneer in FinOps automation for AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Early cloud cost tools mostly showed charts and left humans to buy Reserved Instances and Savings Plans by hand.
Automating Savings Instead of Recommending Them
The ProsperOps bet was automation: continuously manage commitments so finance and engineering teams could raise effective savings rates without a spreadsheet ops layer. The product expanded from AWS into multi-cloud rate optimization as FinOps teams standardized the discipline.
Joining Flexera in 2026
In January 2026 Flexera acquired ProsperOps, according to Flexera. Cochran, speaking as co-founder and CEO, said the companies were positioned to deliver a broader FinOps platform. Keeping automation quality while ProsperOps sits inside a larger IT management vendor is the standing hard turn for customers.
Personal Life
Cochran built ProsperOps in Austin, Texas. Public remarks around the Flexera deal emphasize FinOps automation and multi-cloud cost control more than private hobbies.
