Data center infrastructure automation startup Spacelift gets ready for takeoff after raising $51M – News

Infrastructure-as-code orchestration startup Spacelift Inc. wants to play a more prominent role in information technology environment automation after closing on $51 million in new funding today.

The Series C round was led by Five Elms Capital and saw the participation of Endeavor Catalyst and Inovo Venture Partners. IaC software makes it possible for organizations to create simple scripts that can automatically spin up virtual machines and other cloud resources and shut them down when required. That eliminates the need for developers to configure and launch each asset individually each time they want to get a new application or service up and running.

Spacelift has created a comprehensive tool that’s used by companies to provision, configure and govern infrastructure orchestration workflows across IaC platforms such as Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, Terragrunt and CloudFormation, as well as application deployment tools such as Kubernetes and Ansible. It’s notable for its strong infusion of generative artificial intelligence, making it possible for developers and infrastructure teams to describe what they want to achieve in simple language and let AI handle the grunt work.

It claims that its platform serves as a kind of one-stop shop for managing data center infrastructure at scale across any computing environment. It handles IaC, configuration management and container orchestration, making it simple for teams to create control mechanisms and split workflows into smaller ones, so any problems that occur are easier to analyze.

The platform also lends itself to infrastructure governance, so companies can rapidly configure and provision their cloud and on-premises computing environments in a single, integrated workflow while managing risk and ensuring they can achieve compliance.

Spacelift argues that the main benefit of its platform is that it can accelerate the velocity of developer teams. By reducing the burden on infrastructure engineers, it can help them to satisfy the needs of developers more easily, enabling them to self-serve many of their requirements in a secure way. It also helps to facilitate collaboration across engineering and developer teams, the company says.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Pawel Hytry says enterprises need a more intuitive and intelligent way to manage their technology environments, and that is what his company offers. “This funding propels our vision forward, empowering organizations to effortlessly articulate and realize their infrastructure goals through AI-powered automation,” he said. “The platform delivers compliance, control and rapid scalability, fundamentally redefining the enterprise infrastructure management experience.”

Spacelift is notably also a key contributor to the open-source OpenTofu project, which provides an alternative to the industry-leading IaC platform Terraform. OpenTofu was launched in August 2023 when HashiCorp Inc., the creator of Terraform, controversially altered that project’s license, putting limitations on its use. Under the new license, companies can still access Terraform’s source code and use it as before, but they’re prohibited from using its code as the foundation of competing products, unless they pay licensing fees.

As a result, Spacelift teamed up with other companies to launch OpenTofu, a fork of the Terraform platform’s source code, with a more permissive license that doesn’t restrict how it’s incorporated into commercial products.

OpenTofu has since taken its own course, with more than 600 contributors helping to design features that set it apart from Terraform, and its popularity has exploded, with more than 10 million downloads to date.

Spacelift itself has also enjoyed strong momentum, and it boasts customers including the real estate giant Redfin Inc., financial services firm Checkout Inc., the credit ratings agency Moody’s Corp., educational technology startup Duolingo Inc. and the secure identity tech company SailPoint Technologies Inc. With today’s funding, the company aims to accelerate product innovation and expand enterprise adoption of its platform.

Five Elms Capital Partner Joe Onofrio said he’s backing Spacelift because he believes it’s setting a new standard for IT infrastructure automation, helping to make it more understandable and accessible. “With its strategic focus on bridging human intent and infrastructure outcomes through AI, Spacelift is uniquely positioned to succeed in this rapidly evolving market,” he said.

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