Chainguard
A remote-only company that rebuilds open source software from scratch so it ships without known holes. Valued at $3.5B, and now selling the same safety to AI coding agents.
Fortune, Apr 23, 2025- Valuation
- $3.5B at the April 2025 Series D, up from $1.12B nine months earlier.
- Raised
- About $892M $612M of equity through the Series D, plus $280M of growth financing in Oct 2025.
- Revenue
- $40M ARR in fiscal 2025, up about sevenfold. It aimed for $100M by the end of fiscal 2026; no update published.
- Watch
- Docker went free Docker made 1,000+ hardened images free in Dec 2025, aimed squarely at Chainguard.
- AI
- Selling to agents MCP servers live, a Cursor tie-up, and a Claude-powered bug hunter in beta.
- Liquidity
- None reported no staff tender offer found; shares are not listed anywhere.
- Hiring
- 77 → 94 remote listings since Oct 10.
Free to try, paid to stay safe.
Chainguard sells subscriptions to hardened versions of open source: container images, language libraries, GitHub Actions and VMs. The latest version of popular images is free. Customers pay for the full catalog, older versions and support. It does not publish prices or a revenue split.
TechTarget, Dec 17, 2025- 1A huge catalog, rebuilt from source3,000+ unique container images (1,000 added in six months), 675,000+ variants and 32,000+ OS packages. Build manifests passed 1 billion, double six months earlier.Chainguard via PR Newswire, Sep 3, 2026
- 2A software factory run by bots and AI agentsReconciler bots watch 2,847 upstream sources and hand hard fixes to AI agents. Chainguard claims 88,000+ CVEs fixed this way.Chainguard Factory page, 2026
- 3Built into the places code gets writtenCursor can switch a project to Chainguard on a plain-English request. MCP servers let agents check packages, and its bug hunter sells on Anthropic's Claude Marketplace.Chainguard, Apr 21, 2026
- JFrog$11.6Blisted, Oct 30 close
- Snyk$7.40Bprivate, Dec 16
- Chainguard$3.50BSeries D, Apr 23
- Docker$2.10Bprivate, Mar 31
Private values are the last reported round; they can be stale. Listed values are market value. Bars start at zero.
Every round, and what its terms give away.
Chainguard is private, so there is no share price. What its investors paid, and on what terms, is the closest thing to one.
- $3.50B
- latest valuation, Series D Apr 23
- $892M
- raised in all
- $40M
- ARR, as of Invalid Date
- +600%
- growth, as reported
Post-money valuations as reported. The line starts at zero. Rounds without a reported valuation are left off.
- Oct 23Growth financing$280MLed by General Catalyst Customer Value FundFunds sales and marketing; the CFO said it avoids diluting ownership. Terms not disclosed.SiliconANGLE, Oct 23, 2025
- Apr 23Series D$356M at $3.50BLed by Kleiner Perkins and IVP. About 10% of the company, if all new sharesSalesforce Ventures and Datadog Ventures joined as new investors.Crunchbase News, Apr 23, 2025
- Jul 25Series C$140M at $1.12BLed by Redpoint, Lightspeed and IVP. About 13% of the company, if all new sharesMade it a unicorn about three years after launch.SecurityWeek, Jul 25, 2024
- Nov 1
- Jun 2
- Down round or flat round?No. The Series D valued it at $3.5B, about 3.1 times the $1.12B Series C.Crunchbase News, Apr 23, 2025Clear
- How much of the company the last round soldAbout 10%: $356M at $3.5B. Reports do not say whether $3.5B is pre or post money.Crunchbase News, Apr 23, 2025Clear
- Time since the last raiseAbout 18 months since the last priced round, and about 12 months since $280M of growth financing. No sign of a cash squeeze.SecurityWeek, Oct 27, 2025Clear
- Structured or unusual termsNo unusual Series D terms reported. The $280M from a customer value fund is described as non-dilutive, but repayment terms were not disclosed.SiliconANGLE, Oct 23, 2025Open
- Who led the last roundKleiner Perkins, a new outside investor, co-led with existing backer IVP. Salesforce and Datadog's venture arms were also new.Fortune, Apr 23, 2025Clear
- Tender offers or secondary sales for staffNone reported. Searched company news and press; no tender date or price found.Company news and press, searched Nov 1, 2026Open
- Layoffs in the last 12 monthsNone found in press or company posts. It added 1,000 images in six months and launched four products in Oct 2026.Chainguard blog, checked Nov 1, 2026Clear
Clear: checked, nothing found. Flag: found, with the source. Open: could not be checked.
No filing reported
What the record says, and what we think it means.
The fact is the source's. The read, in italics, is ours.
- 01Good
Valuation tripled in nine months.
Fortune, Apr 23, 2025$1.12B at the July 2024 Series C, $3.5B at the April 2025 Series D, co-led by Kleiner Perkins and IVP.
Investors paid up for fast growth. It also sets a high bar: the next round or IPO has to beat $3.5B for recent grants to gain.
- 02Watch
$280M that is not a normal equity round.
SecurityWeek, Oct 27, 2025Came from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund to pay for sales and marketing. The CFO said it scales spending without diluting ownership. No valuation or repayment terms disclosed.
Good for staff equity in the short run: no new shares. But money like this is usually paid back from the revenue it helps win, so terms matter and are not public.
- 03Watch
Docker made its hardened images free.
TechTarget, Dec 17, 2025In Dec 2025 Docker put 1,000+ hardened images under an Apache 2.0 license and named Chainguard in its pitch. Chainguard had cut its own free tier in Aug 2025.
The basic product is turning into a commodity. Chainguard's answer is breadth, speed of fixes and paid support for older versions.
- 04Neutral
The $100M revenue goal has not been confirmed.
Sacra estimate; Fortune, Apr 2025Chainguard said ARR hit $40M in fiscal 2025 and should pass $100M by the end of fiscal 2026. It has not published a newer figure. Sacra, a research firm, estimates about $100M as of June 2026.
The estimate suggests it is on track, but it is an outside guess. A company-confirmed number would be the next real signal.
- 05Neutral
A scale-up CFO joined in 2025.
Enterprise Security Tech, Jul 30, 2025Eyal Bar became CFO in July 2025 after helping monday.com grow from $18M to $1.2B of ARR. A former NSA staffer, Quincy Castro, became CISO.
Hiring a CFO with a public-company record is often groundwork for an IPO. Nothing has been filed or announced.
- 06Good
Selling through Anthropic's Claude Marketplace.
Chainguard, Oct 14, 2026Chainguard Harness, launched to a beta waitlist on Oct 14, 2026, points Claude Mythos 5.1 at a customer's app to find and fix exploitable bugs. Buyers can pay with their existing Anthropic commitment.
A new revenue line beyond images, and a sales channel Chainguard does not have to build. Still beta, so no revenue yet.
- 07Good
Big-name customers, including OpenAI.
Chainguard via PR Newswire, Sep 3, 2026; Fortune, Apr 2025Named customers include Anduril, Canva, DocuSign, OpenAI, Snap, Snowflake and Public Storage. Over 150 customers at the Series D.
A short list of large buyers points to big contracts, and to real damage if one leaves.
- 08Good
Remote-only, with no office.
Fortune, Apr 23, 2025Fortune reported in April 2025 that Chainguard runs remote-only with no physical office.
Remote is the design, not a perk that can be withdrawn by moving into a building.
Customer is paid 26% over market. Engineering, 10% under.
We save every company's roles, pay by team and level, AI share and churn every day, so each month this page can say more. Sparklines use their own scale.
Can AI agents do business with Chainguard?
We checked the agent payment programs, developer docs and site rules an AI assistant would meet.
Built for agents. MCP is live; most agent products are still beta.
Still Remote read- YesAn MCP server agents can callFour MCP servers, generally available to enterprise customers since Oct 14, 2026: check images, find packages, flag end-of-life versions, check policy. Works with Claude Code and Cursor.Chainguard, Oct 14, 2026
- YesInside an AI coding toolCursor can move a project onto Chainguard images and libraries when asked in plain English. Announced Apr 21, 2026.Chainguard, Apr 21, 2026
- AnnouncedListed on an AI marketplaceChainguard Harness is sold through Anthropic's Claude Marketplace. Beta waitlist only.Chainguard, Oct 14, 2026
- YesSite and docs AI tools can readBoth chainguard.dev/llms.txt and the docs llms.txt exist; the docs index is over 130,000 characters. It also lists Agent Skills for coding agents.checked Nov 1, 2026
- YesLets AI crawlers read its siterobots.txt names 21 AI bots, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, and allows each. It lists markdown sitemaps made for agents. Careers pages are not blocked.checked Nov 1, 2026
Where Chainguard puts AI to work.
- 1AI agents help build the productIts Factory 2.0 uses reconciler bots that hand stuck builds to AI agents, which resolve conflicts and retry. That is how the catalog grew by 1,000 images in six months.Chainguard Factory page; release, Sep 3, 2026
- 2Frontier models hunt for bugs, people sign offChainguard staff run Claude Mythos 5.1 to find exploitable flaws. A named engineer reviews every report and fix before it ships.Chainguard, Oct 14, 2026
More listings than on Sep 15, most of them in sales.
What Chainguard puts on its own channel.
Short videos from Chainguard's official YouTube channel, played here. We only use a channel that links chainguard.dev and carries the company's name.
- The 4 AI-assisted attack patterns your team isn't ready for (Part 6/6)245 views
- See how Chainguard Actions goes beyond SHA pinning to keep you safe #chainguard #cicd #tjactions75 views
- Felipe's Cocina: Colombian arepa de choclo96 views
- Unsafe Development Environments: AI-assisted supply chain attacks, part 5222 views
- CI/CD Abuse: AI-Assisted supply chain attacks, part 4149 views
- Poisoned Context: AI-assisted supply chain attacks, part 339 views
- Malicious Dependencies: AI-assisted supply chain attacks, part 273 views
- Trust abuse at machine speed: AI-assisted supply chain attacks, part 1 #containersecurity42 views
What has to be true for $3.5 billion to hold?
The starting revenue is Chainguard's own reported figure. A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.
At 80x, Chainguard needs $44 million of revenue to be worth $3.5 billion. Your world gets there with $250 million, so the next round likely prices above the last.
$100,000 of equity valued at the $3.50B Series D price would be worth about $571,429 on paper in this world, before dilution from new rounds, taxes and vesting. Private shares only turn into cash at a sale, an IPO or a tender offer.
A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.
Crunchbase News, Apr 23, 2025The signals, and which way they push.
- TailwindAI agents pick dependencies nobody reviews.
Cursor, MCP servers and Claude Marketplace put Chainguard where agents choose packages. Every agent-written line of code raises demand for safe parts.
- TailwindUsage doubled in six months.
Build manifests passed 1 billion in Sept 2026, double the count six months before, with 1,000 new images.
- HeadwindThe core product now has free rivals.
Docker gives away 1,000+ hardened images and attacked Chainguard's free tier by name. Pricing power on basic images will be hard to hold.
- TailwindMore things to sell each customer.
Libraries added Go and .NET, plus Actions, VMs, Workspaces, Checks and Harness. Revenue no longer rests on container images alone.
- HeadwindNo revenue update since 2025.
The last company figure is $40M ARR for fiscal 2025. There is no public update against the $100M goal for fiscal 2026.
Where Chainguard ends up, if we had to bet.
Our calls, not facts. Each one is tied to something that already happened, so you can judge the reasoning.
- 1
Chainguard lists on a US exchange by 2031.
Coin flip 50%IPOIts lead investor says only a big public company counts as a win, and it hired a CFO who helped scale monday.com. But it has raised nearly $900M privately, and non-dilutive money lets it wait.
Fortune, Apr 2025; Enterprise Security Tech, Jul 2025 - 2
A cloud or security giant buys Chainguard before it goes public.
Long shot 16%M&ADatadog and Salesforce already own a piece through their venture arms. No talks have ever been reported, and its lead investor is aiming for an IPO.
Crunchbase News, Apr 2025 - 3
Container images become less than half of what Chainguard sells.
Likely 72%ProductsFree hardened images from Docker squeeze the oldest product. Libraries, Actions, VMs, Workspaces and Harness were all added since 2025.
Chainguard, Oct 2026; TechTarget, Dec 2025 - 4
Most requests to Chainguard come from AI agents, not people.
Likely 72%AIIt already ships MCP servers, agent skills, agent sandboxes and markdown sitemaps for bots. Its Cursor deal routes package choices made by agents straight to its catalog.
Chainguard, Oct 2026 - 5
Chainguard is still the best-known name in hardened open source in 2031.
Coin flip 50%CompetitionIt has a catalog of 3,000+ images and the most agent hooks today. Docker, the company behind the most-used container tool, now gives its version away.
TechTarget, Dec 2025; Chainguard, Sep 2026
Read by the Still Remote research agent on November 1, 2026 from the sources linked on this page. Facts and scenarios only, not investment advice.