Developer tooling provider Anaconda Inc. today announced that it has closed a Series C funding round worth more than $150 million.

Insight Partners led the investment with participation from Mubadala Capital. Bloomberg reported that Anaconda is now valued at $1.5 billion. The cash infusion comes a few weeks after the company’s annualized recurring revenue topped $150 million.

Anaconda provides a software toolkit, the Anaconda AI Platform, that makes it easier to build artificial intelligence software and perform data analysis using the Python programming language. Python is the most widely used language in machine learning projects. One factor behind its popularity is that it has a concise syntax, which reduces the amount of code developers must write.

Another core selling point of Python is that it has a large number of packages. Those are open-source code bundles that ease tasks such as writing database queries and performing mathematical operations. The more packages there are for a programming language, the less code developers have to produce from scratch.

The AI Platform uses an open-source tool called conda to help software teams manage their Python packages. Many packages rely on other packages, which are known as dependencies, to work. According to Anaconda, conda automatically finds the dependencies that must be installed to run the packages used in an AI project. That saves time for developers, who would otherwise need to perform the task manually. 

Anaconda’s platform scans packages for known vulnerabilities and generates a software bill of materials, or SBOM. An SBOM is a list of the components that make up a piece of software. The information in the list makes it easier to identify potential cybersecurity risks. 

Anaconda adds a cryptographic signature to the Python packages that ship with its platform. If hackers attempt to temper with a package, its signature changes, which makes it relatively simple to detect breaches. When a vulnerability is discovered in a package previously thought to be secure, Anaconda’s platform provides remediation advice.

For machine learning projects, the software provides features that monitor how AI datasets change over time. Anaconda can also track many of the activities carried out during AI development. It turns those data points into an audit log that companies can use to demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations.

Another feature, the Anaconda Toolbox Excel Add-In, allows users to run Python code in Excel spreadsheets. Developers can write scripts that use AI to analyze a spreadsheet’s contents. It’s also possible to visualize processing results in a graph.

Anaconda provides its AI Platform along with two open-source tools. The Anaconda Distribution combines Python with conda, several hundred packages and R, a programming language optimized for mathematical tasks. The company also offers Miniconda, a lightweight version of the Anaconda Distribution that includes fewer packages.

“As agents and compound AI systems gain traction, companies need a foundational platform to effectively manage key open source artifacts and components to drive fast, scalable innovation,” said Insight Partners Managing Director George Mathew. “Anaconda takes this a step further by layering simplicity and security to AI in enterprise landscapes.”

Anaconda will use its newly raised capital to enhance its platform, establish a presence in more international markets and make acquisitions. 

Image: Anaconda