GitLab Raises $4M Series A Round From Khosla Ventures For Its Open Source Collaboration Platform

GitLab, the open source Git-based collaboration platform for developers, today announced that it has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures.

The YC-backed company, which offers both a free community edition, a free SaaS version and a paid enterprise edition of its service, says it will use the additional funding to accelerate growth and expand its global operations. The company tells me it’s also considering partnering with businesses in China and Japan.

As GitLab CEO and co-founder Sytse “Sid” Sijbrandij told me, the company decided to raise at this point because “in order to maintain our momentum, it’s important that we have funds present without needing to spend time fundraising.” He also added that even though the company was cash flow positive last month, “Khosla has provided an excellent opportunity for consistent growth.”

Git, of course, has become the default way to manage code for many development teams. While GitHub is likely the best-known Git-hosting service, there are a number of competitors in this space — all of which tend to put a slightly different twist (and user interface) on top of what is essentially a hosted version of Git. Atlassian, for example, offers both free and paid Git hosting services.

GitLab’s focus on its open source solution sets it apart from some of these competitors, which Khosla Ventures Vinod Khosla also stressed in today’s announcement. “Investing in GitLab was an obvious choice,” he said. “Open source solutions are the future, and GitLab is leading the way as the most popular open source code collaboration platform on the market.”

Similarly, Sijbrandij noted that the company’s users choose its solution ” because they can run it on their own servers, the source code is open and adaptable, and organizations can build on top of GitLab.”

The company says more than 100,000 organizations currently use GitLab on premises including NASA, CERN, Alibaba, SpaceX, O’Reilly, IBM and Expedia. As for its paid service, the company says it now has “hundreds of companies” using its Enterprise Edition, “mostly
large organizations including many Fortune 500 companies.”

GitLab also announced that the next update to its service (version 8.0) will launch next week on September 22. The company argues that this update will reduce disk usage by 50 percent and will process code mergers significantly faster than previous versions. Also new are continuous integration with GitLab itself, an improved interface and a “reply by email” feature that the company says will make it easier for its users to comment from their mobile devices.