Kirkland-based cybersecurity company Chainguard is the region's newest unicorn — or billion-dollar company — after announcing Thursday that it raised a $140 million Series C round at a valuation of $1.12 billion.
The funding marks the latest development in a meteoric rise for the 3-year-old startup, which raised a $50 million round in 2022 and a $61 million round last November.
"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," Chainguard co-founder and CEO Dan Lorenc said in a news release.
The company had 90 employees at the time of the November round, with 15 based in the Seattle area. Lorenc said in November that the company doesn't have a physical office or plans to get one.
With the new funding, Chainguard said in the release it plans to expand its product and grow its international presence. The company also wants to grow its government business.
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Chainguard provides secure open-source software so clients can use the software with peace of mind. Lorenc previously told the Business Journal many companies struggle to make code that is not built in-house secure. Chainguard counts Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Snowflake as clients, and it has more than 160 employees listed on LinkedIn.
To date, Chainguard has raised $256 million. Lorenc in November said Chainguard's largest clusters of employees are in the Seattle area, New York City and Washington, D.C. He added at the time the company's clients were evenly split between software companies and financial services, but the company planned to add government clients.
"The federal government is the largest buyer of software in the United States and possibly the world," Lorenc said in November.
Chainguard's founding team all has experience at Google, according to their LinkedIn pages. Lorenc spent almost nine years at Google before Chainguard. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Matthew Moore spent more than seven years at Google, while co-founder and Chief Product Officer Kim Lewandowski also spent more than seven years at Google. Ville Aikas, another Chainguard co-founder, spent 12 years at Google.
Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and IVP led the Series C round. Amplify, Mantis VC, Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital participated. Redpoint's portfolio includes Snowflake, Twilio and Stripe.
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