New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is now officially on a cloud  investment streak. Last week, the venture capital powerhouse chucked in for a $25 million funding round for global data governance provider Bitglass Inc., and on Thursday, it led a $10 million round into another ambitious startup called Luminal Inc. that hopes to redefine how cloud applications are deployed and run.

The Frederick, Maryland-based firm was established in September 2013 by former Amazon Web Services (AWS) principal solutions architect Josh Stella together with  Dominic Zippilli, with whom he had earlier worked at the US Coast Guard Operations Systems Center. Luminal hasn’t emerged from stealth mode yet, so the entrepreneurs are keeping a tight lid on the specific details  of their project, but they did disclose on occasion of the new funding that they’ve created a solution aimed at automating both the configuration and management of customer applications.

The offering, which will only be available for AWS at launch, was described as providing granular control and “previously unattainable” security. That suggests the startup’s main target market is the enterprise rather than the developer community, a more lucrative market but one that possess a higher barrier to entry, especially for an emerging player on a budget.

Luminal didn’t officially divulge anything beyond that, but a March blog post by Zippillii, who serves as director of product development, revealed that its software is based on Python. The scripting language is widely used for automating administrative tasks, as well as a  wide range of other applications.  Among other things, it powers the core OpenStack APIs,  a fact which could be taken as an indication that the platform may have been a consideration from the outset. It would certainly make sense from a strategic standpoint given that the project is poised to become a fixture in the future of the enterprise management landscape.

If OpenStack is indeed a priority for the startup, then that would mean it’s focusing not so much on infrastructure-as-a-service but the hybrid cloud, a much broader opportunity that is garnering a lot of attention among CIOs. The careful omission of the word “public” from the press release announcing the financing seemingly affirms that, but it’s all speculation at this point.

The round, which also saw the participation of existing investors Core Capital and Maryland Venture Fund, brings Luminal’s total funding raised to $13.8 million. Stella, the firm’s CEO, said that the capital infusion will be used to hire more engineers and lure additional customers to its private beta program. No launch date was provided.

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