CircleCI, an early adherent to the notion of continuous delivery when it launched in 2011, announced a $100 million Series E investment today.
It comes on top of a $56 million roundlast July.The round was led by IVP and Sapphire Ventures.
Under the terms of the deal, Cack Wilhelm will be joining the CircleCI board.
Jai Das from Sapphire will also be joining the board as an observer.Todays investment brings the total raised to $215 million, according to the company, with $156 million coming over the last 8 months.
The company did not want to discuss its current valuation.Circle CI CEO Jim Rose says with so much uncertainty because of COVID-19 he welcomes not only the money, but the quality of the firms and people involved in the investment.Were really excited to get both IVP and Sapphire because theyve seen all of it all the way through public and beyond.
Given all of the nuttiness over the last few months obviously having cash on the balance sheet is extremely helpful, but the other part, too is that this a time when you want to have more brains around the table, not fewer.
And so being able to get people to help out and just think about the problems that were encountering right now is really helpful, Rose told A Technology News Room.Rose recognizes the huge challenge everyone is facing, but he sees this switch to remote workforces really driving the need for more automation, something his company is in a position to help DevOps teams with.What weve seen from a DevOps perspective is that this forced migration to remote-only for so many organizations has really driven the urgency for more automation in the DevOps pipeline, he said.He said this has led to a huge surge in usage on the platform in recent weeks, and todays investment will at least partly go towards making sure there are enough resources in place to keep the platform stable whatever comes.When we think about money and we think about where were investing in the near term, were investing a lot in making sure that the platform is stable and available and supporting all of our customers as they go through this.
You know this is a difficult time, a difficult transition and were trying to make sure that were doing everything we can to support our customers through that process, Rose said.Many companies at this stage of startup maturity begin to look ahead to an IPO, but Rose isnt ready to discuss that, especially in the current economic climate.
Were going to have to get folks to some kind of liquidity at some point, but I think right now our focus is on really investing in the platform and investing in our customers and then well let the market clear out and figure out what the new normal looks like, he said.The company would consider making some acquisitions with its base of capital if the right opportunity came along.
Were always evaluating and always looking around.
One of the interesting things about our space is that its flooded with new and innovative approaches to point problems.
There are a lot of companies that are interesting, so were definitely always looking around, he said.