Secure software supply chain solution provider Chainguard Inc. revealed today that it has raised $280 million in new funding to help meet growing demand and accelerate its mission to make open-source software trustworthy by default.

Founded in 2021, Chainguard helps organizations build, deploy and run open-source software with minimized risk from vulnerabilities and supply chain attacks. The company’s products include hardened base container images, language libraries and virtual machine formats that are verified for security. They’re also curated to have minimal or zero known vulnerabilities and designed to be used as foundational building blocks in production environments.

Chainguard provides a catalog of more than 1,700 minimal container images that have zero known vulnerabilities, covering a wide range of modern stacks. The images are available through major cloud marketplaces such as Azure, Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google Cloud Platform. They integrate into developer workflows, continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines and enterprise deployment practices, allowing organizations to adopt open source swiftly, safely and at scale.

Along with offering secure open-source software, Chainguard also works to build trust into the open-source supply chain by working on community standards and tooling and by helping redefine how software is built, packaged and shipped so that security and velocity go hand-in-hand.

“Open source powers the world, but the way it’s delivered and deployed often introduces risk,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Dan Lorenc (pictured). “At Chainguard, we’re flipping that script: We guard open source from all the things that can go wrong with it, so engineering teams can build anything they want with it.”

The growth financing came from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund.

“Chainguard is defining a new category at the heart of modern infrastructure: trusted open-source software,” said Pranav Singhvi, managing director and co-head of CVF. “By solving one of the most pressing challenges in software development and deployment, the company is setting a new standard for engineering teams.”

The company intends to use the funding from General Catalyst to invest in and accelerate its go-to-market scale while preserving equity dollars for investments into product, engineering and additional strategic long-term value creation. In a press release, Chainguard said the approach will enhance its financial profile, support disciplined growth and position it to capture a rapidly expanding market opportunity as trusted open source becomes mission-critical infrastructure for global enterprises.

The new funding takes the total raised by Chainguard to approximately $892 million, based on data from Tracxn. Previous funding rounds raised by Chainguard include $50 million in June 2022, $61 million in November 2023, $140 million in July 2024 and $356 million on a $3.5 billion valuation in April.

Photo: Chainguard