Balena Inc., a Seattle-based provider of tools for building and managing connected devices, today said it has closed a $14.4 million funding round backed by General Electric Co.’s venture arm.

Returning backers Threshold Ventures and Aspect Ventures participated as well, while Boston-based OpenView led the round. Balena’s total capital raised now stands at more than $31 million.

Balena, known until recently as Resin.io, offers a software suite that reduces the amount of work required to set up and manage internet-connected hardware outside a traditional data center. The startup’s customers use its technology to support systems as varied as farm sensors and ocean exploration drones. 

At the cornerstone of Balena’s product suite is a connected device operating system called balenaOS. It’s a hardened, bare-bones version of Linux that can withstand hardware failures and is designed to run applications packaged into software containers. Balena also offers a cloud-based development toolkit that companies can use to develop containerized applications for their balenaOS-powered devices.

Software containers are a popular means of deploying enterprise applications that offer several useful features for developers. One of them is the ability to move code among different kinds of hardware without major changes, which can save a lot of time in projects that involve multiple device types. Balena’s tools enables developers to push code quickly from their workstations to the cloud and from there to connected devices their companies are running at the edge.

The suite doesn’t rely on Docker, the market’s dominant container engine, but rather a homegrown framework known as balenaEngine. The software deploys developers’ code in a format that the startup claims is up to 3.5 times lighter than Docker images. 

Balena’s product suite also provides features for handling the day-to-day management of device fleets. A centralized web console enables operations teams to monitor system health, apply configuration changes and remotely set up newly deployed devices. 

Balena claims to have hundreds of customers across markets including healthcare, farming, energy, real estate and robotics. The number of devices being managed using its platform has quadrupled in the past year. The startup will use the new $14.4 million in funding to keep up the growth and expand its portfolio with yet more software tools. 

Photo: Balena