CircleCI Raises $100M Series E

CircleCI has raised $100 million in its Series E round, the company announced Tuesday.

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CircleCI, a platform for continuous integration and continuous delivery, automates tasks for software development teams–from when the code is built to when it reaches the customer. By automating the process of building, testing and deploying, software teams are able to work faster.

The new round, which was led by IVP and Sapphire Ventures, brings CircleCI’s total funding to $215 million. IVP partner Cack Wilhelm is also joining the company’s board of directors.

Prior to about a year and a half ago, it was mostly technically sophisticated companies (think Facebook, tech startups) that were using continuous integration and continuous delivery for software. But what’s changed is that more traditional, established companies are adopting the methodology to speed up their business, CEO Jim Rose said.

CircleCI counts Facebook, Spotify and Ford Motor Co. as customers. Within the last year large companies like Unilever, Aetna and NBC Universal have signed on with the company, according to a statement from CircleCI.

“CI/CD was once a cutting-edge development idea reserved for savvy technology companies, but now we’re seeing that expand to all companies,” said IVP’s Wilhelm in a statement. “CircleCI is an especially attractive investment given the depth and complexity of the product and the underlying dataset they have observed over time on how great companies build and release software.

The digital transformation of large companies tends to be very involved, Rose said, so CircleCI will be building up its ability to work with those companies, along with building up revenue. But it all comes down to continuing to stay close to developers.

“At the end of the day that’s our core user … and then making sure we make their lives easier and better, and regardless of where those developers are sitting, whether a big company or small company,” Rose said.

CircleCI is based in San Francisco and has offices in Tokyo, London, Denver, Boston and Toronto.

CircleCI was drawn to IVP and Sapphire Ventures because of the firms’ track records with companies in related areas, Rose said, pointing to Datadog and ThoughtSpot as examples.

“They kind of have a roster of ‘who’s who’ in our space in adjacent spaces,” Rose said. “So there’s a ton of expertise between the two firms.”

CircleCI has also been connected to Wilhelm of IVP for some time, as Wilhelm was previously at Scale Venture Partners, which led CircleCI’s Series B round in 2016.

CircleCI last raised money with its $56 million Series D in July 2019, which was led by NextEquity Partners and Owl Rock Capital Partners, according to Crunchbase data.

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias