SkyPilot abstracts infrastructure complexity by providing a single interface to run workloads on Kubernetes or multiple cloud providers. The platform automatically selects optimal hardware based on cost/performance requirements and handles provisioning/dependencies. Researchers value SkyPilot for its ability to burst capacity during peak demand while maintaining consistent environments. Key features include spot instance management, job queuing, and cross-cloud storage integration. The open-source project is particularly popular in academia and among startups needing to optimize cloud spend without sacrificing flexibility.