OPSCODE CLOSES $11 MILLION SERIES B ROUND
Battery Ventures Leads New Round in Infrastructure Automation Start-up; Sunil Dhaliwal to Join the Opscode Board of Directors
SEATTLE, Wash – June 21, 2010 – Opscode, Inc., a cloud infrastructure automation company, announced today that it has closed an $11 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Battery Ventures and includes a follow-on investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, who led Opscodeʼs Series A round of funding of $2.5 million, bringing the total amount raised for the company to $13.5 million. As part of this investment, Sunil Dhaliwal, a general partner at Battery Ventures will join Opscodeʼs Board of Directors. Proceeds from the new funds will be used to expand the companyʼs engineering staff, fuel research and development initiatives, and drive sales and marketing efforts.
“We are witnessing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make world-class IT infrastructure available to the masses,” said Sunil Dhaliwal a General Partner at Battery Ventures. “While legacy vendors have made billions solving discrete automation problems for very large organizations, the future belongs to those that can deliver simple, scalable automation to any IT user, regardless of their size or sophistication. As a founding investor in data center automation pioneer BladeLogic, we understand the enormity of this shift, and are tremendously excited to support Opscode in making it a reality. They have the team, the technology and the market momentum needed to truly democratize infrastructure management.”
Opscodeʼs technology enables companies of all sizes to build, scale, and manage world-class, fully automated infrastructures based on community best practices and expertise. In 2009, Opscode released “Chef”, an open source systems integration framework. Since this time, more than 150 individuals and 25 companies including Rackspace, RightScale and the Springsource division of VMware have signed on to contribute to the project, making it the worldʼs largest open source configuration management project based on the number contributors. Using Chef, software developers and engineers are able to manage large-scale server and application deployments by writing code, rather than running commands by hand. Chef is currently in production at top websites, including 37Signals, Etsy, IGN Entertainment, Scribd, Wikia, and White Pages.
“In just a very short period of time, Opscode has attracted some of the brightest minds in infrastructure. These individuals have been responsible for managing some of the worldʼs largest and most complex computing environments and it is from this collective expertise that the idea for Opscode was born,” Jesse Robbins, co-founder and CEO of Opscode. “We count ourselves most fortunate to have partnered with firms like Battery Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson who bring a great deal more than just capital to Opscode. Most importantly, closing a round of this size lets us focus our energies squarely on helping our customers – as well as the Chef community — get the most out of their infrastructure.”
About Opscode
Opscode provides world class infrastructure automation for servers, datacenters, desktops, & the cloud. Opscode makes Chef, the open source configuration management and integration framework used by thousands of organizations to manage and scale infrastructure. Founded in 2008, Opscodeʼs management team includes experts responsible for creating and operating some of the worldʼs largest websites and cloud computing platforms. The company is privately held and headquartered in Seattle. More information can be found at www.opscode.com.
About Battery Ventures
Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies, and stages of a companyʼs life — from start-up and expansion financing to growth equity and buyouts.
Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including: Airespace (acquired by Cisco), Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), BladeLogic (acquired by BMC Software), Netezza (NYSE Arca: NZ), Omniture (NASDAQ: OMTR), and ProfitLogic (acquired by Oracle). Battery currently manages more than $3B in committed capital and invests from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley and Israel. For more information, visit: www.battery.com.
Press Contact:
Robert Nachbar, Kismet Communications, 206-427-0389, rob@kismetcommunications.net
Karen Bommart, Battery Ventures, 781-478-6672, kbommart@battery.com