Chainguard has closed $280 million in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. The investment brings the company’s total funding to $892 million and marks $636 million raised in just the past six months. The capital will help Chainguard meet surging demand for secure, production-ready open source software as organizations grapple with mounting supply chain security threats.
The company plans to use the funds to scale its go-to-market operations while preserving equity for product development and engineering innovation. This approach reflects Chainguard’s strong unit economics and positions the business to capture what it sees as a rapidly expanding market opportunity.
Open Source Security Becomes Mission-Critical
Open source software now comprises roughly 90% of the code organizations use daily. It powers the applications and technologies that businesses depend on to deliver products and services. While open source has driven significant innovation across industries, its widespread adoption has also made it a prime target for attackers. A single vulnerability can cripple entire organizations.
Chainguard delivers hardened, secure builds of the open source software that engineering teams rely on. The goal is simple: make open source trustworthy by default.
“Open source powers the world, but the way it’s delivered and deployed often introduces risk. 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,” said Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder of Chainguard. “We’re building the best, trusted source for open source. With this strategic capital, we can accelerate the adoption of Chainguard across more companies, helping engineering teams build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.”
Strategic Capital for Disciplined Growth
Given Chainguard’s financial performance, the company will deploy this balance sheet capital primarily to accelerate go-to-market scale. By taking growth financing rather than traditional equity funding, Chainguard can invest aggressively in sales and customer acquisition while preserving ownership stakes and maintaining flexibility for long-term product investments.
“This growth capital reflects the strength of Chainguard’s business, and how we’re scaling rapidly, operating with discipline, and planning for the long term,” said Eyal Bar, Chief Financial Officer at Chainguard. “Our partnership with General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF) is an important part of that strategy: it enables us to scale go-to-market investment without diluting ownership or slowing innovation. This structure allows our commercial motion to fund its own growth while giving us the flexibility to double down on product and engineering — where our differentiation lies, and build the operational scale and financial profile required for the next stage of growth.”
The structure is designed to support sustained expansion while maintaining the operational discipline that has characterized Chainguard’s trajectory so far.
Defining a New Software Category
General Catalyst sees Chainguard as creating an entirely new category within modern infrastructure. The fund’s leadership points to the company’s ability to address one of the most pressing challenges in software development and deployment.
“Chainguard is defining a new category at the heart of modern infrastructure: trusted open source software. By solving one of the most pressing challenges in software development and deployment, the company is setting a new standard for engineering teams,” said Pranav Singhvi, Managing Director and Co-Head of the Customer Value Fund. “Dan is a standout founder who has built the business with incredible unit economics and intelligent capital allocation decisions.”
Building the Trusted Source for Open Source
Chainguard was founded to solve a fundamental problem in modern software development. As organizations race to secure their software supply chains, they need production-ready open source that doesn’t introduce risk. Chainguard provides exactly that.
The company has built a catalog of more than 1,700 minimal, zero-CVE images through its Chainguard Containers offering. These images cover the majority of modern application stacks. Recently, Chainguard expanded its product suite to include Libraries for JavaScript, Java, and Python, giving organizations confidence that malware hasn’t been inserted during the build or distribution process. The company also announced Chainguard VMs, which offer a cloud-agnostic, threat-resistant environment for deploying and running containers.
Chainguard’s customer base includes Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders such as Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. The company has made its products available on all major cloud provider marketplaces, including Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform, allowing customers to adopt Chainguard directly within existing procurement and deployment workflows.
Recent Milestones Signal Strong Momentum
The company has hit several significant milestones recently. It was named to the Forbes Cloud 100 and the Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology, recognizing both its market position and company culture. Chainguard also brought on a new CISO and CFO to support its next growth phase.
These achievements reflect broader momentum as trusted open source becomes essential infrastructure for global enterprises. As demand continues to rise, Chainguard is positioning itself as the definitive source for secure, production-ready open source software.
Investor Backing and Long-Term Vision
Chainguard is backed by some of the most respected names in venture capital, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. Now, with General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund providing substantial growth capital, the company has the resources to execute on its long-term vision.
The focus remains clear: help engineering teams build faster, maintain compliance, and eliminate risk by making open source software trustworthy by default.
