Chainguard
Worth-Joining Index · Scorecard
v2.1 ALPHA · 2026-08Career Score
71/100
Coverage
85%
Verified
50%
Stage cohort
Growth
Vibe Check
🎪 community voting coming soon
Latest valuation
$3.5B (Series D, 2025-04)
Total raised
~$612M total raised (as of 2025-04 Series D)
Traction · Key numbers
Funding
Total raised
~$612M total raised (as of 2025-04 Series D)
Rounds
2
Valuation pace
~1 year from $1.1B
$356M
Series D · 2025 · valuation $3.5B (Series D, 2025-04) · led by Kleiner Perkins, IVP
Roughly 3x the $1.1B valuation from a year earlier
$140M
Series C · 2024 · valuation $1.1B post · led by Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, IVP
Securing AI workloads was the main narrative
▸Valuation is outpacing ARR: ~3x in a year ($1.1B→$3.5B) vs ~7x ARR growth ($6M→$40M) — real growth, but the price already bakes in years of future penetration
▸Kleiner Perkins and IVP doubling down across rounds is a bet that security compliance becomes mandatory purchasing, not just a product-market-fit signal
▸A $356M Series D is top-tier size for dev-tools/security — investors are pricing this as infrastructure, not a point solution
Founders
Dan Lorenc CEO
Former Google open-source security engineer, worked on projects like sigstore
Matt Moore CTO
Former Google engineer, worked with Lorenc for a decade
Kim Lewandowski CPO
Former Google open-source security lead
Ville Aikas Distinguished Engineer
Former Google engineer
Reality · Working here
Signals & Risks
Editorial ✎
Good fit for
· Security engineers with deep interest in software supply chain security, SBOMs, and container infra — one of the few companies turning compliance necessity into product
· Engineers who like building unglamorous but critical low-level infrastructure — not consumer-facing, but invoked by countless CI/CD pipelines daily
· People who buy into 'vuln-response speed as moat' — the company must keep proving it beats cloud vendors' in-house alternatives on responsiveness and coverage
Not for
· Those chasing a near-term IPO or liquidity event — supply-chain security has long enterprise sales cycles and slow procurement
· Those who want a diverse founding team background — the core team is heavily concentrated ex-Google open-source security engineers, which risks groupthink
Ask in the interview
1. At $3.5B valuation (~88x ARR), what's the path to growing into that multiple over the next two years?
2. If AWS/GCP/Azure build in-house 'zero-CVE image' offerings, how long does Chainguard's differentiation hold?
3. Of the ~$40M ARR, how much is driven by mandatory compliance (govt/financial customers) vs. voluntary adoption?
Data changelog
Community corrections → editorial review → applied, fully on the record
data as of 2025-04 · Source: PR Newswire (Chainguard press release) ↗
data as of 2025-04 · Source: PR Newswire (Chainguard press release) ↗
data as of 2025-04 · Source: PR Newswire (Chainguard press release) ↗
data as of 2025-04 · Source: PR Newswire (Chainguard press release) ↗
data as of 2025-04 · Source: PR Newswire (Chainguard press release) ↗
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