Buildkite

Buildkite was founded in 2013 by Keith Pitt and Tim Lucas. Pitt built the original version of Buildkite after building and selling Desktoppr and holding engineering roles at Envato and Qantas; Lucas designed the core product and had previously worked at Pin Payments and Amen.⁠[1][2]

Lachlan Donald joined Buildkite as a co-founder after investing early; he had been the founding CTO of 99designs. At its founding the company raised about A$200,000 in seed funding.⁠[2][3]

On August 18, 2020, Buildkite announced a A$28 million (about US$20.2 million) Series A led by OpenView with participation from General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry, valuing the company at more than A$200 million. It was the company’s first round since its founding in 2013.⁠[3][4]

Then co-founder and CEO Lachlan Donald said the company had not sought funding earlier because it was growing profitably, allowing it to “maintain control of our destiny.” Buildkite had 26 employees at the time; part of the round funded a 42x return for early investors and shareholders, and the rest went to product development.⁠[3]

The release named Lachlan Donald as CEO, Keith Pitt as CTO and Tim Lucas as chief product officer. Shopify CTO Jean-Michel Lemieux and OpenView venture partner Ashley Smith joined the board.⁠[4][3]

Buildkite said at the time that it had more than 1,000 customers and 30,000 engineers using the platform, including ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry, Pinterest and Wayfair, and described itself as the first to introduce the self-hosted agent model. Pitt said security was his motivation for building the platform: “I realized a hybrid approach was the solution.”⁠[4][3]

Buildkite launched its second product, Test Analytics, in 2021; when announcing its Series B, the company said the product had processed more than a billion tests for customers.⁠[2][1]

In 2022 Buildkite raised a US$21 million (A$31 million) Series B co-led by OneVentures and AirTree, with participation from General Catalyst and Don Pym, founder of the digital bank Up. OneVentures invested A$15 million from its Growth Fund V. The round brought Buildkite’s total funding to US$39 million (A$58 million).⁠[1][2]

Customers named at the announcement included UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry, Shopify, Slack and Canva, and the funds were earmarked for new developer products and for growing the operations, marketing and sales teams. Buildkite says it reached US$15 million in annual recurring revenue and a team of 75 by 2022.⁠[1][2]

In 2023 Buildkite made its first acquisition, buying the package hosting service Packagecloud.⁠[2]

On March 3, 2025, Buildkite announced that founding CEO Keith Pitt was stepping down; he remained a major shareholder and continued to give input on customers and product vision. Board chair Barry Crist, formerly CEO and chair of Chef Software, led the company during the search for a new CEO.⁠[5]

At the same time James Wilson, who had worked at AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry, Amazon Web Services and WooliesX, was appointed chief technology officer.⁠[5]

On August 4, 2025, Buildkite named Kevin Gounden chief executive officer. Gounden had most recently been chief product officer at Lightcast and Randstad; Barry Crist had served as acting CEO before the appointment. The company also cited chief marketing officer Jay Wampold, who joined in February 2024, and chief financial officer Francine Hackett, who joined in December 2024.⁠[6]

The release described Buildkite as based in San Francisco and Melbourne and called its product an “agentic CI/CD platform,” naming customers including AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry, Block, CanvaCanvaCanva is an online design platform company headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams and launched in 2013, it offers template-based drag-and-drop design tools for non-designers and later expanded into team collaboration, video, email, forms and generative AI features.Open the full entry, SlackSlackSlack is a team communication and collaboration platform developed from an internal tool at Tiny Speck. It organizes work through channels, direct messages, searchable history and integrations, with features including Huddles, Clips, Canvas and AI assistance. Its paid service launched in February 2014, and Salesforce completed its acquisition in July 2021.Open the full entry, Uber and Wayfair.⁠[6]

Buildkite’s website lists its leadership as CEO Kevin Gounden, CTO Lachlan Donald, CFO Francine Hackett and chief revenue officer Chris Larkins, and its board as Barry Crist, Michelle Deaker, Tim Lucas, Judy Anderson-Firth and Adam Gross. Donald previously served as COO and then CEO, and Lucas was co-CEO and CMO until 2022.⁠[2][2]

The company says its team is fully remote, with staff in more than 60 cities, and that the platform has more than 60,000 users at customers including OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry, AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, Uber, Airbnb, Block, Canva and Shopify.⁠[2]

Buildkite: Official website: https://buildkite.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/buildkite (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buildkite (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://youtube.com/buildkite (opens in a new window).⁠[2]