HashiCorp is probably best known for Terraform, its open-source tool for automatically provisioning infrastructure by describing it as code. But the company also offers a whole range of additional open-source security tools and products that enable multi-cloud deployments, as well as enterprise versions of these tools that add features for larger teams on top of these free versions.
Today, the company announced that it has raised a $40 million Series C funding round led by existing investors GGV Capital and Redpoint, with Mayfield and True Ventures also participating.
As HashiCorp CEO Dave McJannet told me, the company has seen growing momentum in recent years. While it doesn’t disclose current customer numbers, it does disclose some of its customers’ names; these include the likes of Adobe, Barclays, Comcast, New Relic, SAP Ariba, Segment and Spaceflight.
The foundation of all of this is the company’s open-source tools, which have now been downloaded more than 22 million times. To monetize those tools, HashiCorp focuses on making sure that the open-source products focus on the needs of individuals, while the commercial products focus on teams. This means adding the necessary features to enable teams to collaborate on Terraform, for example, or to add governance tools and support for audit trails — the kind of services that enterprises are looking for. “We orient around organizational complexity,” McJannet explained, and likened the company’s approach to how GitHub relates to the git protocol.
With this round, HashiCorp has now raised just over $74 million. McJannet argued that the company didn’t have to raise at this point. “We have this enormous usage of our open-source technology,” he told me. “That has driven enormous endorsement from the cloud ecosystem. We reduce the friction of cloud adoption — and that’s good for the market.” Over the last 18 months or so, the company has seen its growth accelerate — especially with regard to getting contracts with larger enterprises. “We were in a position where we didn’t need to raise funds but looked at it and thought that we want to make sure we make our customers successful,” McJannet said. “We want to be able to double down on our customer support and field organization to make sure we make these companies successful. We take this responsibility really seriously.”
While HashiCorp plans to grow across the board, the company tells me that it will also expand its presence in Europe and Asia.