Daytona Secures $5M to Simplify Development Environments

Today, we at Daytona, the self-hosted 'Development Environment Manager,' are excited to share that building on the momentum of a remarkably successful $2M pre-seed round and our recent open-source launch—both of which have surpassed our wildest expectations—we have secured an additional $5M in fresh funding, led by Upfront Ventures.

Breaking Down Enterprise Barriers

Daytona was originally designed with large enterprises in mind, as they were the ones that motivated the Daytona team to jump into this new venture. Their need to enable developers to automate tasks, collaborate effortlessly, and enhance productivity—all while maintaining security standards these enterprises require, was missing from the market. Fast forward from our last announcement in November 2023 to today - our Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) nearly doubled within just those six months. Showing the need and continued pull from the enterprise market.

However, there are another 26M or so developers left in the world that still suffer from “works on my machine” problem. According to a paper published in the respected IEEE journal, developers lose 56% of their productive time due to inefficient development environments. So instead of restricting access to our tool solely to large enterprises, we made the decision to democratize it.

Simplifying Development for All

In early 2024, we made a decision that went beyond merely attempting to solve the problem; we decided to develop a solution and also make it available as open source. Our thesis was that by open-sourcing key components of Daytona, we could enable every developer to solve the "works on my machine" problem, regardless of whether they are part of a large enterprise or working independently. Moreover, since Daytona is truly open-source under the Apache 2.0 license, developers can extend it or even build on top of it to suit their specific needs. 

Launched on March 6, 2024, our open source project has been one of the most impactful of the year, amassing over 2000 GitHub stars in 48 hours and consistently being featured on the GitHub trending repository list, highlighting the strong support and high demand from the developer community.

Daytona directly addresses inefficiencies of development environments, allowing any developer to download Daytona and use a single command, daytona create, to set up a full development environment. This can be run on a remote server or locally, providing a one-click SaaS-like experience without the hosting costs.

Daytona is addressing an ever growing pain in software development. Their previous experience in the industry, coupled with the strong demand from the market, and their clear grasp of the developer community, made backing them an obvious decision for us.

Enis Hulli, General Partner at 500 Emerging Europe

The Why and the Who

This funding round was led by Upfront Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that has been investing in the US and Europe since 1996, and is one of the largest and longest-standing firms in Southern California.

The round also included participation from our existing investor 500 Global which has doubled down on its investment in Daytona. With $2.7 billion in assets under management, 500 Global has funded over 35 billion-dollar companies, including GitLab, Twilio, Algolia, and many others.

Their alignment with our vision is a testament to the strength of our mission and the belief of industry leaders in our ability to deliver.

In line with this momentum, we are delighted to announce that Kevin Zhang is joining our board, bringing a wealth of experience and strategic vision to Daytona. As a new board member, Kevin will work alongside our CTO and co-founder, Vedran Jukic, and our CEO and co-founder, Ivan Burazin, to drive our mission forward and ensure we continue to innovate and meet the developer community’s needs.

We’re thrilled to support the Daytona team’s mission to simplify development environments. Daytona’s vision of simplifying and democratizing development environments aligns perfectly with our investment philosophy. The most forward-thinking companies in the world have landed on cloud developer environments to achieve a uniform developer environment for their teams. The Daytona founders have been working towards this since their prior startup Codeanywhere. Their subject matter expertise and passion uniquely position them to build a beloved developer experience that also satisfies even the strongest security requirements. We’re thrilled to support its mission and look forward to seeing the additional impact the team will have on the developer community.

Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures

Looking Forward

While our open-source project is still in its alpha stage, it has shown significant progress and garnered a growing community of contributors and users. The new capital will be instrumental in strongly tackling the “works on my machine” issue. This funding and support will enable us to lower the barrier to entry and democratize software development on a global scale.

“Setting up a dev environment can feel like starting a car in the 1900s—engaging the handbrake, adjusting the fuel valve, mixture control, spark advance, choke, and throttle, turning the ignition, and often running into issues,” said Ivan Burazin, co-founder and CEO of Daytona. “With Daytona, it’s like starting a car in 2024: any driver can just push a button and go. Enabling developers to focus on what truly matters—writing code and building innovative solutions”

Our seed funding round is more than a financial milestone; it’s a testament to the mission of simplifying development environments. Our ultimate goal is not only to make every developer more productive, rather enable a new cohort of people to become developers by removing unnecessary complexities and lowering the barrier to entry.