DEVOPSdigest

Buildkite announced the close of $28 million funding led by OpenView, bringing its valuation to over $200 million AUD.

Founded in 2013, Buildkite is a fast and secure way to test and deploy software at any scale. The company’s continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform supports over 1,000 customers, 30,000 engineers and lets some of the largest companies run fast, secure and scalable pipelines on their own infrastructure.

Today’s companies need to be digital-first, requiring flexibility, speed and scale. Unfortunately, many traditional CI/CD platforms come with security issues and have limits to scale, resulting in delayed software and productivity roadblocks. Buildkite created the self-hosted agent model that solves these trade-offs and lets companies be in total control of their source code and security without sacrificing security, performance or the maintenance of on-prem solutions.

“A good litmus test for how well a company is run is their approach to CI/CD,” said Lachlan Donald, CEO and co-founder, Buildkite. “When CI/CD doesn’t work, it shows throughout the entire organization - teams slow down, products are delayed and customers turn elsewhere. We want every company to feel confident in their ability to test, build and release software as fast as possible. Buildkite helps companies achieve breakthroughs by giving them the ability to scale and have absolute trust that they are releasing the best software.”

The close of the fresh funding and new valuation comes on the heels of strong global performance. Customers across high-growth SaaS companies, regulated industries like finance and healthcare and the world’s leading autonomous vehicles have selected Buildkite as their preferred CI/CD platform. Companies like Shopify, Pinterest, Wayfair and more turn to Buildkite for its hybrid architecture and security, with developers reporting an average of at least a 5x decrease in build time.

“The needs for scale today are completely different from the needs for scale yesterday,” said Mackey Craven, Partner, OpenView. “The global pandemic and the resulting economic uncertainty underlines the importance for companies to maximize efficiencies and build for growth. As the world continues to build digital-first applications, we believe Buildkite’s unique approach will be the new enterprise standard of CI/CD and we’re excited to be supporting them in realizing this ambition.”

“Many CI/CD options force businesses to make a decision between security or scale,” said Keith Pitt, CTO and co-founder, Buildkite. “My priority from day one as founder of Buildkite was to end this compromise. We let teams scale across thousands of agents instantly, without requiring them to give us access to their codebases or production systems.”

“Our customers are moving fast to change the world and they deserve tools that keep up with their ambitions,” said Tim Lucas, CPO and co-founder, Buildkite. “We were founded to give companies a completely different and long-lasting option. Our approach to our own growth is no different. We are building a different shape of company, one that grows sustainably, remains hyper-focused on our customers and team.”