Chainguard Raises $140 Million in Series C Funding to Secure the Next Frontier of AI Workloads

Chainguard triples valuation to $1.12 billion in less than one year, as its secure-by-design, minimalist approach to container images becomes a de facto technology for locking down open source software in the modern software supply chain.

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Chainguard, the safe source for open source, today announced it has completed a $140 million Series C round of funding led by Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and IVP, bringing the company's total funding raised to $256 million. Existing investors, including Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, and Mantis VC also participated in the round.

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Demand for the company’s Chainguard Images solution continues to see rapid adoption among enterprises, with a more than 5X increase in its customer base year-over-year and an over 175 percent increase in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in the first six months of the fiscal year. The company has more than doubled its employee base over the past year to support this demand and bring its Chainguard Images product to as many customers as possible.

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Now valued at $1.12 billion, the company is making investments to expand its Chainguard Images product offering to safeguard emerging technologies like AI workloads. The company is also expanding go-to-market operations in international markets and growing its Federal business to service more customers looking to meet compliance requirements for software security.

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“We’ve shown our customers and the industry there is a better way to align developer and security priorities when it comes to adopting open source software securely. The complexity and scale of vulnerability management has outgrown the capabilities of most organizations to manage on their own,” said Dan Lorenc, CEO and Co-Founder of Chainguard. “Chainguard has brought an essential layer of security to the open source consumption model, which was already strained by new attack types like Log4j and XZ Utils, and is under even greater pressure from a combination of rapidly adopted AI workloads and intensifying regulatory requirements. We empower developers to focus on doing what they do best-- writing great software--with a newfound confidence they are building upon a secure, vulnerability-free foundation, where starting left, not shifting left is the only way."

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Want to hear more from Dan? He shares his thoughts on the current state of the industry, raising money and where Chainguard is headed in his latest LinkedIn article.

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“Chainguard has reimagined software delivery and consumption and is the safe source for open source software,” said Sai Senthilkumar, Partner at Redpoint Ventures. “Chainguard Images have extremely strong product market fit and give developers and security teams peace of mind. Chainguard is one of the fastest growing enterprise businesses we have seen in the past several years and we could not be more thrilled to join on this mission to build the industry standard for software security."

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Today, the company is also announcing the general availability of Chainguard AI Images, a growing suite of CPU and GPU-enabled container images, including Pytorch, Conda and Kafka, that are hardened, minimal, and optimized for efficient software development. The solution also offers optimized GPU-enabled images, like PyTorch, with dependencies including drivers and libraries to secure the deployment and management of GPU Accelerated AI applications with low-to-zero vulnerabilities and hardened configurations.

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Chainguard’s secure container images are used by the world’s most advanced technology companies like Anduril, Canva, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Snowflake and leading cybersecurity companies Checkmarx, Cyera, and Wiz to tackle vulnerability remediation and lock down their software supply chains. Chainguard is also committed to providing secure, compliant solutions tailored for federal and regulated industries, working with customers and strategic partners like ILS to enable users to access a custom registry of secure container images on U.S. federal government networks.

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In addition to investments in product and go-to-market, the company continues to add to its leadership ranks. Joining the team are its first Vice President of People, Kendra Mitchell, former Chief People Officer at Chief. Caitlin Quinlan also joined as the company’s Senior Vice President of Go-to-Market Strategy following operations leadership roles at Gainsight, Mixpanel, and MongoDB.

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‍Chainguard is growing! Join our mission to redefine open source security. Check out our job openings at Chainguard today — your new career awaits!

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Supporting quotes:

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“Chainguard has built a one of a kind product that turns the notion of securing software on its head,” said Arsham Memarzadeh, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “The team has emerged as the enterprise developer standard for open source software and we at Lightspeed are excited to partner with them on their incredible growth trajectory.”

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“Enterprises are turning to Chainguard and realizing a clear ROI right away by eliminating the resource burden of patching software vulnerabilities and meeting compliance standards. Otherwise, they risk becoming the next company headline for a preventable security breach,” said Tom Loverro, General Partner at IVP. "Chainguard will become the default option for developers as they build software and a single destination for companies to go to for images they know are secure."

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“Anduril is redefining what defense contractors look like, in part by implementing commercial technology and moving at the pace of relevance.” said Joe McCaffrey, CISO at Anduril. “Doing so while remaining compliant in a highly regulated environment is extremely challenging. Chainguard Images help us deliver on this mission with hardened container images that lead the market in secure software development.”

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"Our partnership with Chainguard enabled us to meet or exceed the rigorous standards required in highly regulated industries and government sectors where we serve our customers,” said Andrew Cunje, Chief Information Security Officer at Appian. “By reducing the burden of patching and hardening associated with managing supply chain risks, we can increase our developers' focus on driving innovation in support of our customers' missions."

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“On our mission to empower the largest enterprises to secure their applications from code to cloud, adopting Chainguard’s secure container images has been a game-changer,” said Sandeep Johri, CEO at Checkmarx. “With Chainguard, we’re able to meet and maintain stringent compliance requirements for software vulnerabilities, and their Images product seamlessly integrates within our developer workflows, delivering instant results, and secure outcomes.”

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"Building the world’s leading enterprise data security solution means we need to be at the cutting edge of secure innovation,” said Shalom Yerushalmy, Head of DevOps Engineering at Cyera. “Chainguard’s secure container images solution is transforming Cyera's approach to eliminating vulnerabilities, freeing up our developers’ time to focus on innovation and the most pressing security priorities for our customers.”

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“At Trustpilot, we regard information security as an integral part of running an online review community,” said Stu Hirst, CISO at Trustpilot. “Chainguard’s secure container images solution is transforming Trustpilot’s approach to eliminating vulnerabilities, freeing up our developers’ time to focus on innovation and delivering new features that build trust, grow, and improve the platform for users and customers.”