Open Source Company JiHu GitLab Secures Round A Financing

Open source company JiHu GitLab announced on Monday that it had completed an A round of financing worth several hundred million yuan. This round of financing will be used for product research and team expansion, market development, open source ecological construction and independent intellectual property research.

This round of financing was carried out in two stages. The first stage was led by Temasek, followed by Alpha Prime, GGV Capital, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund and the Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) Fund. The second stage was led by Taikang Insurance Group, followed by Cheers Fund, Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group. This round also saw previous shareholders such as Sequoia Broadband Cross-border Digital Industry Investment Partnership and Gaocheng Capital increase their investment in the company.

JiHu GitLab is a DevOps company jointly established by the US-based open source platform GitLab Inc. and funded with Chinese capital. The company set up its operations in March 2021 and was provided technology and branding by its US parent. The company is managed by a local team that is independent of other operations. After this round of financing, GitLab Inc.’s shareholding ratio will be reduced to less than 50% and China’s own independent operating system will be further implemented.

Open source is one of the ways to spread software. Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. It is essentially different from free software, which does not necessarily provide its source code. The business essence of open source is to give up some profits in exchange for the dissemination of ideas and efficient collaboration.

The company independently researched, developed and launched “GitLab Integrated Security DevOps Platform”, GitLab SaaS and “GitNative DevOps Integrated Machine”, which were closer to the needs of Chinese developers while the infrastructure and data of the company’s products are independently stored in China. The company provides users with inner security capabilities and unique security compliance systems, which range from configuration, data, and vulnerability management, in addition to event response, in order to ensure the security compliance of open source data.

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In terms of innovation, the company will continue to develop its integrated DevOps platform capability based on the open source core. The team is looking to not only localize its software but further explore the application of key technologies such as Cloud Native and supply chain security software.