Render Services Inc., a startup working to reduce the amount of manual work involved in setting up and managing cloud workloads, today disclosed that it has secured a $20 million funding round.

San Francisco-based Render plans to triple its 35-person workforce over the next year using the Series A round, which was led by investment firm Addition. The startup also intends to add numerous new features to its namesake offering, which it describes as a “zero DevOps” cloud platform. 

Render’s platform is designed to reduce the complexity and cost of maintaining a public cloud environment. The cost of a cloud deployment consists of more than just the infrastructure resources that an organization purchases. The engineering work involved in managing infrastructure resources and the applications running on the hardware itself represents a major expense, Render argues.

The startup’s platform provides a series of services designed to make cloud operations simpler. One of Render’s services is a code deployment tool that allows developers to set up software container applications, websites and other workloads in as little as a few seconds, the startup says. If a workload encounters errors, the platform can automatically reset it to resolve the issue.

One of the most time-consuming tasks involved in running a cloud environment is fine-tuning the volume and type of infrastructure resources that an application uses. If not enough hardware is provisioned for an application, the user experience can be negatively impacted. But if a company provisions too much hardware, unused infrastructure resources can lead to unnecessary costs. 

Render provides an autoscaling service as part of its platform that can automatically add and remove infrastructure resources as an application’s requirements change. Companies with more granular requirements can also deploy infrastructure-as-code automation scripts to manage their cloud resources.

Render has extended its value proposition beyond just helping customers deploy workflows and manage infrastructure. The startup also competes in the cloud database market with a hosted version of the popular PostgreSQL database. In the adjacent cloud storage market, Render offers the Render Disks service, which provides access to on-demand flash drives with features for preventing data loss.

Render plans to expand into yet more segments using its latest $20 million funding round. In a blog post today, founder and Chief Executive Officer Anurag Goel said the startup intends to launch a managed object storage service. Also on the agenda: managed versions of data management systems such as Redis and features for mitigating distributed denial-of-service attacks. 

“From helping startups kick-start their DevOps journey to empowering large teams to automate Day 2 operations and gain insight into their infrastructure, Render is focused on delivering on an ambitious product roadmap and cementing our place as the platform of choice for developers and cloud-native businesses alike,” Goel said. 

Simplifying cloud infrastructure maintenance is a particular priority for startups, which often don’t have a large information technology department that can manage the task. Companies outside the tech industry that may have limited cloud expertise can likewise benefit from products capable of reducing infrastructure complexity.  

Render says tens of thousands of developers and businesses have adopted its platform since its launch in 2019. Render’s customers have used the platform to create more than 300,000 services to date, the startup says, and it currently processes some 4 billion requests per month.

Render has raised a total of $26.75 million in funding since launching. 

Image: Render