Chainguard raises $61 million series B round as enterprises move to fortify open source software

Chainguard–the leader in software supply chain security–announced it has completed a $61 million Series B round of funding led by Spark Capital, bringing the company’s total fundraising to $116 Million alongside accelerated growth for its Chainguard Images solution

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KIRKLAND, Wash., November 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ – Chainguard, the leader in software supply chain security, today announced it has completed a $61 million Series B round of funding led by Spark Capital and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Amplify Partners, The Chainsmoker’s Mantis VC, and Banana Capital.

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Over the past six months alone, the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) has tripled and its hardened, secure container image solution is now used by Fortune 500 companies and technology providers, including GitGuardian, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Sourcegraph, Snowflake and Replicated.

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"The future is clear - if you adopt open source software you are responsible for securing it. Chainguard is on a mission to be the safe source for open source that every organization building software today can rely on to build right, build safe and build fast," said Dan Lorenc, CEO and Co-founder of Chainguard. "Open source adoption across the industry has grown dramatically over the last several years, but the gap in doing so securely is widening. Enterprises and governments are struggling to remain compliant and secure while the pace of software development is increasing."

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Chainguard has expanded its Images solution to include a growing inventory of secure container images with over a million image builds, giving developers the freedom to build safe software with the tools and applications they know and love. The solution also includes a comprehensive API for customers to understand changes in vulnerability status from Image version to version and critical software supply chain security requirements like Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) and software signatures.

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"Enterprises do not want another software security tool, they want secure software," said Clay Fisher, General Partner at Spark Capital. "Chainguard has fundamentally re-imagined open source security by not just alerting customers of possible vulnerabilities, but also proactively fixing them, giving developer and security teams peace of mind and time back to do what they do best – build. There is nothing like Chainguard in the market today and we could not be more excited to support them on their important mission to be the safe source for open source software.”

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“Snowflake is on a mission to help organizations scale their cloud businesses securely,” said Brandon Sterne, Senior Manager, Product Security at Snowflake. “Adoption of Chainguard Images has transformed the way our team builds securely with open source software across the organization and has helped to streamline and strengthen our FedRAMP certifications by providing fast open source vulnerability remediation.”

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Recently, Chainguard hired its first President Ryan Carlson, former Chief Marketing Officer at Okta and Wiz. Dustin Kirkland also joined as the company’s first Vice President of Engineering following product and engineering leadership roles at Goldman Sachs, Google and Canonical.

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The company, founded two years ago in October 2021, plans to use the new funding to support growth by expanding the global go-to-market team, investing in product research and innovation and expanding customer support services.

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About Chainguard

Chainguard was founded by the industry’s leading experts on open source software, supply chain security and cloud native development and is backed by Sequoia, Spark Capital, Amplify Partners, the Chainsmokers and more. The team has worked together to build and deliver large-scale software products and enterprise services in high-growth environments like Google, Microsoft and VMWare. Core to the Chainguard offering is Chainguard Images, a comprehensive collection of minimal container images which have 97.6% fewer vulnerabilities than industry alternatives. Chainguard is trusted by Fortune 500 companies in the financial services and technology sectors to cutting-edge startups and SBMs. Its customers include the Department of Homeland Security, GitGuardian, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Snowflake, Sourcegraph, Replicated and more. For more information, please visit: https://www.chainguard.dev/.