Hungarian founded, Y Combinator grad Bitrise raises $60 million

Helping mobile organisations get apps to market bigger, faster, and stronger, Hungarian founded Bitrise has raised $60 million in a Series C funding round. The service provides mobile app developers with the ability to automate integration, testing, and deployment, and plans to use the new capital to further develop and promote their offer. In total, the company has raised $100 million.

Based on a shared frustration of the mobile app development process, in 2014 co-founders Barnabas Birmacher, Viktor Benei, and Daniel Balla decided to do things differently. Developing their own novel approach to, err developing, by 2017 the team holds the dubious honour of being the first, and as of yet, only Hungarian company to be accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator programme.

The company counts over 100,000 developers working with brands such as Rakuten, WISE, BOSE, Virgin Mobile, Grindr, Tonal, Compass, Mozilla, Philips Hue, and Marks & Spencer that rely on Bitrise’s tools, processes and practices.

“The way mobile operations are currently staffed and organized, only a fraction of the top 1% of mobile companies are equipped to reach critical adoption and long-term profitability,” said CEO Barnabas Birmacher. “Success is skewed in favor of companies with the largest talent pools and budgets, rather than defined by creativity, customer centricity, and excellent user experiences. Our Series C will enable us to continue to deliver on the mission we’ve had since day one: to make mobile success about prioritizing creativity and end-users, rather than mastering complex tooling that constantly breaks down.”

Bitrise’s $60 million Series C round was led by Insight Partners, and was joined by existing investors including Partech, Open Ocean, Zobito, Fiedler Capital, Y Combinator, and H14.

“Mobile is now the norm and not the exception. It can no longer be addressed by siloed tools or extensions of existing desktop tools, instead, it requires a complete purpose-built DevOps platform that specifically addresses the nuanced needs of the mobile-first world,” commented Partech’s Reza Malekzadeh. “The Bitrise team shared that vision with us on day one and has been executing perfectly on that journey. We believe the team will continue on their path to becoming the leader in this space, defining and delivering the platform for mobile at scale."