Generative infrastructure-from-code startup AppCD rebrands as StackGen after raising $12.3M
Summary
Generative infrastructure-from-code startup AppCD Inc. said today its rebranding itself as StackGen after closing on a $12.3 million seed funding round.The funding, which was led by Thomvest Ventures with participation from existing investors WestWave Capital, FireBolt and Secure Octane, will help StackGen to accelerate its product development plans and its go-to-market strategy in order to fuel its growth.StackGen is looking to disrupt the infrastructure-as-code industry that has emerged to simplify the lives of cloud system engineers. IaC enables users to write scripts that can automate the configuration of cloud-based servers, eliminating the need to set things up manually a time-consuming process that can involve adjusting hundreds of different settings.However, StackGen believes that this requirement writing scripts manually is almost as burdensome as the original way of doing things, so it thinks theres a lot of productivity to be gained by automating that work. We have also found some initial benefits to using prompt-based architecture design, and have a first pass at that in our product.In a press release, StackGen co-founder and Chief Executive Sachin Aggarwal discussed the reasoning behind the companys rebranding, saying that the new name is a better representation of the companys commitment to revolutionizing IaC.The funding will enable us to meet the growing demand from enterprise customers as we continue to deliver on our vision for the future of infrastructure from code, Aggarwal said. Our new name encapsulates this vision and mission to provide seamless, full-stack infrastructure solutions that enhance the developer experience and enforce industry standards, while embracing generative AI.In addition to the funding and rebrand, StackGen revealed its expanding its executive leadership team with a trio of new faces, starting with Arshad Sayyad, who becomes the companys first chief business officer. Sayyad brings a lot of expertise to the startup, having previously served as president of Fidelity Investments India and as managing director of Accenture Plc.The other new faces are Danielle Cook, a former ambassador at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and Lauren Rother, who formerly worked at IaC leader HashiCorp Inc. Theyre joining StackGens go-to-market team, and will be tasked with accelerating the growth of its nascent generative IaC platform, which launched in March.Umesh Padval, managing director of StackGens new backer Thomvest Ventures, said he believes the startup can potentially help DevOps and security operations teams improve their productivity by up to ten-times.