DevOps Automation Service Chef Raises $40M Series E Round Led By DFJ Growth

The Seattle-based DevOps and IT automation service Chef today announced that it has raised a $40 million Series E round led by DFJ Growth, DFJ’s fund for investing in $10 million+ rounds. One part of this round worth $32 million already closed earlier this year, but since then, a number of new investors have come on board.

Besides DJF Growth, all existing investors also participated in this round, including Battery Ventures, Citi Ventures, DFJ, Ignition Partners, and ScaleVP. New in this round is Hewlett Packard Ventures, which is joining with a strategic investment. HP, it’s worth noting, is already a Chef customer and recently signed a resale agreement with the company, too.

As Chef CEO Barry Crist told me, the company still has most of its Series D round in the bank. “We’re doing this opportunistically to make deeper investments in the business.” The investments include both a focus on the company’s core technology for helping developers manage their infrastructure, as well as expanding the service globally.

Chef already has an office in London and is looking to open new ones in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Asia, where the company is seeing increasing adoption of its service in a number of countries, including China.

Crist tells me that 2015 is shaping up to be a “banner year” for the company. The company has also signed up a record number of new customers so far this year. “The most important measurement that we look at is the rate of growth,” Crist said. “And what we’re finding is that as we grow, our growth is also accelerating.”

Crist also noted that he sees HP’s participation in this round as validation for the company’s strategy. That company’s investment, he said, “tells the story that the established players see Chef as the center of the new DevOps ecosystem.” About half of the Fortune 50 already use Chef in some form, he noted, and added that about 80 percent of Chef’s revenue now comes from traditional enterprises.

Chef is at the center of a fundamental shift in IT as enterprises race to change how they build and deploy software to become high-velocity organizations,” DFJ Growth Principal Sam Fort added. “Chef has become the leading platform for enabling this transition, and we are thrilled to lead this investment to help accelerate Chef’s growth in the market.”