Business

IT firm Cloudsmith secures pre-seed investment round

Audrey Osborne from Techstart Ventures pictured with (from left) Cloudsmith's Lee Skillen, Peter Lorimer and Alan Carson
Audrey Osborne from Techstart Ventures pictured with (from left) Cloudsmith's Lee Skillen, Peter Lorimer and Alan Carson Audrey Osborne from Techstart Ventures pictured with (from left) Cloudsmith's Lee Skillen, Peter Lorimer and Alan Carson

BELFAST-based IT firm Cloudsmith has closed a significant but undisclosed pre-seed investment round from Techstart Ventures in support of its product and eco-system development plans.

With a global customer base spanning 17 territories, Cloudsmith offers secure digital online storage locations to help developers and high-performing companies automate and improve their software development pipelines.

The software as a service (SaaS) offering is a platform that gives Cloudsmith’s customers a broad control surface for their choice of security, analytics and workflow tools, from development, through deployment to distribution.

This approach is unique and potentially transformational for the global software industry, offering universality to a fractured and disparate ecosystem - simplifying and accelerating software provenance through a single, normalised control plane.

With an office on Belfast's Malone Road, Cloudsmith is working with the world’s leading developer tools and cyber security businesses to establish a ubiquitous and globally recognised platform to support responsive and resilient software pipelines in terms of their quality, security and compliance.

The cost of poor quality software in 2018 to the US market alone has been calculated at $2.84 trillion by the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ).

And set against the size of the problem, the cyber-security and developer tools markets combined have been estimated to be worth in excess of $260bn by 2023.

“The development opportunities and cyber-security culture within Northern Ireland has never been stronger than it is today, and having the backing of Techstart is incredibly important in terms of their expertise, contacts and leverage as we prepare for the next stage in our journey,” said Cloudsmith chief executive Alan Carson.

“Their belief is a vote of confidence and we believe a sign of the fantastic things to come."

Audrey Osborne of Techstart Ventures added: “Cloudsmith brings together a great team with deep domain expertise, cutting edge technology in a rapidly growing market. Their unique accelerated provenance platform and global ambitions hold the potential to create an exciting scalable business."