Developer software startup JFrog has landed $165 million in funding as venture capital investors look for their next big thing in enterprise software.
JFrog CEO Shlomi Ben Haim told Coins2Day that the startup’s latest investment values the company at over $1 billion, but he declined to cite a specific valuation. The enterprise startup now joins a growing list of so-called unicorn startups with private valuations of at least $1 billion dollars.
Developers use JFrog’s core product to help manage large software projects in what’s known as agile development, which involves continuously working on apps by making small updates.
The company’s latest funding comes just months after Microsoft said it plans to buy software developer darling GitHub for $7.5 billion. Microsoft’s planned multi-billion dollar acquisition has spurred investors to flock to similar enterprise software startups that offer tools for coders.
In September, another similar agile development startup, GitLab, said it received $100 million in funding and is now valued at over a $1 billion.
Haim said that JFrog executives started seeking funding in early September, and closed the round about two weeks ago, underscoring the current frenzied appetite among investors for startups in the agile and related DevOps space.
Haim acknowledged that Microsoft’s upcoming multi-billion dollar purchase of GitHub likely helped contribute to venture capital interest in JFrog. He said there is strong investor interest in companies focusing on “developer tools,” considering recent big deals like business software company Red Hat’s $250 million acquisition of enterprise startup CoreOS in January and enterprise company Atlassian’s rising share price since going public in late Dec. 2015.
“It’s very good timing for us to scale,” Haim said.
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Insight Venture Partners led the funding round with new investors Spark Capital and Geodesic Capital, and existing investors like Battery Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and Vintage Investment Partners. JFrog has over 400 employees, with customers including Google, Airbus, and Toyota.
JFrog has raised a little over $226 million in total funding.
Some of the company’s competitors include enterprise startups like Sonatype and Docker and Amazon’s elastic container registry service.
