Seattle-area cybersecurity startup Chainguard landed $280 million in new financing, just six months after a Series D round pulled in $356 million.
The new funding, announced Thursday, comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF).
Founded in 2021, Chainguard aims to help customers secure their “software supply chain,” a term used to describe a company’s software production line.
Chainguard focuses on helping companies keep their open source software secure and offers tools to manage container images, a core code component of cloud-based applications. It has more than 150 customers, including ANZ Bank, Canva, GitLab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, VPBank, and Wiz.
Technically based in Kirkland, Wash., the remote startup has raised $892 million to date as its valuation has risen beyond $3.5 billion. The company is ranked No. 3 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups, and Chainguard recently landed on LinkedIn’s list of the top 50 startups in the U.S. (at No. 18).
CEO and co-founder Dan Lorenc said the funding will help accelerate the adoption of Chainguard across more companies.
“Open source powers the world, but the way it’s delivered and deployed often introduces risk,” Lorenc said in a statement. “At Chainguard, we’re flipping that script: we guard open source from all the things that can go wrong with it, so engineering teams can build anything they want with it.”
Chainguard CFO Eyal Bar said the partnership with General Catalyst enables Chainguard “to scale go-to-market investment without diluting ownership or slowing innovation.”
Instead of using equity to fund sales and marketing spend, General Catalyst provides structured growth capital tied directly to customer acquisition and recurring revenue. The goal is to let startups like Chainguard preserve equity while using outcome-based financing to scale efficiently.
Previous Chainguard investors include Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.
Previously:
- Cybersecurity startup Chainguard lands $356M at $3.5B valuation, up from $1.1B a year ago
- Chainguard doesn’t have an office. Here’s how the $3.5B cybersecurity startup makes remote work.