Buildkite Pty Ltd., an Australian developer tooling startup that boasts big-name customers such as Shopify Inc. and OpenAI, today said that it has closed a $28 million funding round at a valuation exceeding $200 million.

The investment was led by OpenView Venture Partners. The investment firm’s earlier bets in the enterprise software market include publicly traded Datadog Inc. and SwiftStack Inc., the data management startup that was acquired by Nvidia Corp. in March.

Melbourne-based Buildkite provides a continuous integration and deployment platform that development teams use to handle the process of turning raw code files into working applications. In the enterprise, that process involves multiple tests to ensure the software doesn’t contain issues such as security flaws. Buildkite allows developers to automate the task by creating workflows that perform testing with little to no human input. 

The platform’s edge over competing continuous integration and deployment tools is its speed. Buildkite claims it can reduce the amount of time required for pre-deployment code testing severalfold by parallelizing the process, carrying out multiple tests simultaneously instead of one after another. The platform performs the task by assigning the execution of tests to so-called agents, lightweight software engines that can be deployed in large numbers on a company’s infrastructure.

Buildkite permits up to 10,000 agents per account for customers. The startup says one user, e-commerce giant Shopify, managed to reduce software build times from 40 minutes to 10 minutes for its 900-plus engineers by switching to its platform. 

Overall, Buildkite says its platform is used by about 30,000 engineers at more than 1,000 companies, including organizations in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare. Part of the reason behind the startup’s traction in regulated industries is that it allows companies to firms its platform on their own infrastructure rather than delivering the offering as a managed service. Buildkite comes in a cross-platform version and a preconfigured version designed specifically to be deployed on Amazon Web Services. 

“We’ve often heard from our customers that Buildkite is the best-kept secret in developer tooling,” co-founder and Chief Executive Lachlan Donald told SiliconANGLE. “We are going to use this fundraise to tell the world about Buildkite.”

The $28 million round announced today is the first time the startup has raised funding in its seven-year history, according to data from Crunchbase. It comes five months after OpenView backed a $100 million funding round for UserTesting Inc., another software testing startup that helps enterprises assess the quality of their applications and websites by collecting feedback from users. 

Image: Buildkite