Here are some startups that might be worth paying attention to.
Tigris Data is building a globally distributed, S3-compatible storage and data service platform. They were founded by ex-Uber engineers and are backed by a16z.
Archil is developing a POSIX-like filesystem that makes S3 buckets behave like low-latency shared storage. They were founded by ex-AWS and Netflix storage engineers and are seed-stage, backed by Felicis, YC, and General Catalyst.
DriveNets sells software that clusters merchant-silicon (Broadcom Jericho) white-box routers with a separate x86 control-plane into a single distributed chassis implementing carrier IP/MPLS/SR-EVPN roles. They were founded by ex-Intucell people and are late-stage with ~$587M from D1, Bessemer, Pitango, etc., with production deployments at AT&T. See https://drivenets.com/blog/ai-networking-options-smart-nics-vs-scheduled-fabric/. It sounds like Ultra Ethernet to me.