Switzerland-based software development company SonarSource, which operates its U.S. headquarters in Austin, says it is gearing up for growth in Austin after landing a significant infusion of capital.
The company just completed a $411 million funding deal, giving it a valuation of $4.7 billion.
SonarSource’s platform is used by companies to maintain code quality, security and reliability. The company was co-founded in 2008 in Geneva by CEO Olivier Gaudin, Freddy Mallet and Simon Brandhof.
More:Austin can expect to add 22,000 tech jobs in next five years, report estimates
‘A very tech-friendly city’
The company opened its Austin office in 2018. Vice president of sales Patrick McKinney oversees Central Texas offices, which consists of about 70 employees. SonarSource has 290 employees worldwide.
SonarSource chose Austin for its U.S. base in part because of its location in the central time zone, as well as its pool of skilled workers, including those fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Gaudin said.
“It’s a very tech-friendly city and it’s also a city that is growing fast, so you can hire talent instead of just fighting all the time for talent,” he said. “It’s also a great city to attract talent because once you’ve been to Austin you really want to come back.”
The company is in the process of relocating to a larger downtown space at 206 East Ninth St. to accommodate more employees. The goal is to double the headcount over the next year to 140 employees in areas including sales, marketing, services, finance and human resources, Gaudin said.
“I think it’s ambitious as a plan, especially because we are not the only ones recruiting,” he said. “But I think we can do it.”
SonarSource said it will use its new investment to grow its marketing team globally in an effort to propel the company to reach $1 billion in annual revenue.
More than 5 million developers at 300,000 organizations use SonarSource’s products to write code, according to the company. As software gets upgraded continuously, SonarSource embeds clean code directly into the development process, which it says systematically improves the overall health of the code base.
More:Would Elon Musk move Twitter’s headquarters to Austin?
That allows developers to save time and focus on delivering better products and improving customer experience, the company says.
“Source code is the key component of software. At SonarSource, we enable companies to make this source code an asset rather than a liability,” Gaudin said. “This delivers huge value, especially when you know this is done as part of the development process and requires no extra effort.”
SonarSource counts 80 Fortune 100 customers among its customers, including IBM, Microsoft, Barclays and Alphabet, as well as NASA.
More:Elon Musk’s Boring Co. raises a giant pile of cash. What might it do with it?
The company will use the cash infusion to double its sales force in 2022 and grow its marketing team across existing offices in Switzerland, France and Germany, along with the Austin office.
In addition, SonarSource will open a new regional headquarters in Singapore, allowing the company to build its business within the Asia-Pacific region.
SonarSource is the latest company with an Austin hub to achieve ‘unicorn’ status — meaning it has a valuation of $1 billion.
In March, Austin-based Flash, which runs a technology platform for parking garages, raised $250 million for a valuation of more than $1 billion. In January, artificial intelligence company SparkCognition said it raised $123 million at a more than $1.4 billion valuation.
https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2022/04/27/software-maker-sonarsource-aims-double-employee-count-austin/7440161001/