GitLab's founders. Image: GitLab
GitLab was upfront about its latest valuation, which soared to $2.75bn, as well as its planned IPO in November 2020.
On Tuesday (17 September), San Francisco-headquartered DevOps platform GitLab announced that it had closed $268m in Series E funding.
In a statement, GitLab said that it is now valued at a massive $2.75bn.
The Series E round was led by Iconiq Capital and Goldman Sachs. There was additional participation from existing investor Y Combinator Continuity Fund.
The company said there was investment from new backers, including Adage Capital Management LP, Alkeon Capital, Altimer Capital, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners LP, Franklin Templeton, Light Street Capital, Tiger Global Management and Two Sigma Ventures.
GitLab’s CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, said: “To be competitive today, companies need to be 10 times faster to market. We made an early bet that enterprises would benefit from a single application experience for DevOps teams to accelerate getting software products to market faster and more securely.
“I love hearing how our customers are innovating faster with a single DevOps application that enables dev, ops and security to collaborate, and this funding will help more organisations experience the benefits of this unified DevOps experience.”
Plans
While many start-ups prefer to maintain an air of mystery when it comes to their valuation or IPO plans, GitLab is happy to remain transparent about such details. On the company’s website, there is a page that lists the company’s strategy, right down to the specific date that the firm plans to go public: Wednesday 18 November, 2020.
The company says that this date was set as it is “five years after the first people got stock options with four years of vesting”, but also “for a number of other fun, company culture related reasons”.
Aside from an IPO, GitLab said that the funding would be used to further develop its platform, adding key features in areas such as monitoring, planning and security.
Over the past year, the company has more than doubled its employee headcount to support the 100,000 organisations using GitLab, which include Delta Air Lines, Goldman Sachs, Ticketmaster and Nvidia. The company has plans to hire even more members to its product, marketing, sales and administrative teams.
The company has 222 open job opportunities dedicated to supporting growth. There are now 800 employees spread across 55 countries. In 2015, the company had less than 10 employees.
The company’s chief revenue officer, Michael McBridge, said: “GitLab’s ARR growth rate of 143pc is a direct reflection of the positive business outcomes realised by our customers as they move to GitLab’s single application solution.
“We’ve seen the industry follow our lead, as our customers dramatically increase the efficiency of their DevOps workflows and deliver their products to market much faster. This funding will accelerate delivery of the full vision and product scope of GitLab’s complete DevOps platform and deliver even more value to customers.”
