GitLab raises $ 100 million from Iconiq, GV and Khosla, at a valuation of $ 1.1 billion

Code Collaboration and DevOps Platform GitLab raised $ 100 million in a series of Iconiq Capital Series D financings, with the participation of existing investors GV and Khosla Ventures.

The latest round of financing comes almost a year after GitLab announced its $ 20 million C Series, when the San Francisco-based company said its valuation had more than doubled since the B-series. year earlier. a dollar valuation accurate at this time. Today, however, the company said it is now valued at $ 1.1 billion, giving it the coveted status of "unicorn."

Code hosting and collaboration

Founded in 2014, GitLab is often bundled with GitHub, as it offers similar code hosting repositories that help developer teams collaborate and manage their software development projects as they evolve. However, GitLab has pushed this domain to other developer-oriented products. Last September, with the release of GitLab 10.0, the company took a big step forward in its DevOps mission by seeking to target the entire software development, deployment, and monitoring market. In its last major fundraising, the company discussed how it intends to "unify development and operations in one user experience."

And that's where we are, a year later, and GitLab has just won a huge slice of cash, bringing its money back to more than $ 145 million. The company said it plans to use its cash injection to "become the best of its kind" in all DevOps software categories.

"GitLab has become a leader in the entire software development ecosystem by delivering software at exceptional speeds," said Matthew Jacobson, partner at Iconiq Capital. "They are developing the software development market by developing an application that allows organizations to ship software at an accelerated pace and dramatically increase their efficiency."

Ultimately, GitLab is poised to create an all-in-one platform that prevents companies from integrating with many development services such as Atlassian's Jira, GitHub, New Relic and BlackDuck. GitLab wants to be a single point of contact for all the needs of a developer, and has stated that he is already able to do so, although he still needs to improve in some areas.

"Some of our tools, such as Continuous Integration, are already the best in their class," said Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, at VentureBeat. "Some newer tools, such as monitoring, are newer and need to be updated, but with this increase, we need money to help our community do it."

One of the big challenges GitLab has faced is its constant comparison with GitHub. But now that GitLab is moving towards a DevOps platform, its mission will be to tell its customers everything. can make.

"Currently, most of our users do not know what GitLab can do for them – most think we have control of the version with a bit of continuous integration," added Sijbrandij. "When we tell them they can do without the integration of nine different tools, they love it. It is up to us to tell this story whenever we have the opportunity. Fundraising means we can create more opportunities to do it.

investments

The latest increase came just months after Microsoft announced its intention to acquire GitHub for $ 7.5 billion, shortly after GitLab revealed it was abandoning Microsoft Azure for Google Cloud. And Atlassian – who is perhaps best known for his Jira problem tracking software – is riding the wave on Wall Street. The Australian company went public on the Nasdaq in 2015 and its shares have recently surpassed the $ 90 mark for the first time, an increase of more than 150% over last year.

In other words, the development tools are widespread, and that is why Iconiq, GV and Khosla still use GitLab.

"We are reaching a point where every business is a software company, and big companies are starting to realize that without the developers, they can not innovate," Sijbrandij said. "Developers play a crucial role in the growth of the company and have officially got a seat at the table. We want GitLab to become synonymous with a well managed engineering organization. "

Usually, getting a company to embark on IPO projects is a challenge. But GitLab resisted this trend a few months ago when it announced its intention to go public on Wednesday, November 18, 2020. "We are still striving to achieve this ambition," confirmed Sijbrandij at VentureBeat.