Devops software company Chef raises $40M with HP Ventures participating

Chef, a startup with devops software for automating the management of the infrastructure that applications run on, announced today that it has raised $40 million in new funding.

The money will help Seattle-based Chef expand internationally, according to a statement.

Chef’s software, which includes some open-source components, is widely used. Chef says it has more than 750 paying customers, including Facebook, GE, IBM, Nordstrom, and Yahoo. Now the startup is looking to become an even bigger force in enterprise software, as it continues to face competition from privately held Puppet, Ansible, and SaltStack, among others.

DFJ Growth and Millennium Technology Value Partners led the new round. Battery Ventures, Citi Ventures, DFJ, Ignition Partners, and Scale Venture Partners also participated, along with new strategic investor Hewlett-Packard Ventures. At one point, HP held a prominent role in the business of configuration management, thanks to its $1.6 billion Opsware acquisition in 2007. Now Chef and Puppet regularly get attention in the category of devops, which stands for the fusion of developers and operations in the same person or team.

Formerly known as Opscode, Chef started in 2008 and has now raised at least $103 million, including the $32 million round from December 2013.