KESTRA RAISES $3M TO BUILD THE UNIVERSAL OPEN SOURCE ORCHESTRATION SOLUTION FOR ALL ENGINEERS

We are thrilled to announce that Kestra has raised $3 million of funding to build the leading universal open-source orchestrator. They aim to empower a wide range of users, from software developers to data engineers, by simplifying and unifying their automation and orchestration needs. The founders envision Kestra as the go-to solution for organizations seeking simple and powerful orchestration solutions for any kind of process and data automation usage.

Since its inception, Kestra has experienced significant traction as an open-source project, thriving with a vibrant community of users and contributors. Thousands of companies, from startups to large enterprises, including Huawei, Leroy Merlin, Acxiom, Tencent, Gorgias, Sophia Genetics, and Decathlon, are already orchestrating their mission-critical workloads with Kestra.

This funding was co-led by ISAI, Axeleo Capital, alongside several SaaS and Open source specialists angel investors, including founders and executives from Datadog (Olivier Pomel, Co-Founder and CEO), Collibra (Stan Christians, Co-founder & Chief Data Citizen), Strapi (Pierre Burgy, Co-Founder and CEO), BlaBlaCar (Olivier Bonnet, CTO).

Kestra’s innovative approach to orchestration aims to overcome the challenges posed by hyperspecialization in various domains — be it data orchestration, process and microservice orchestration, or infrastructure and business automation. Such hyperspecialization has often resulted in organizational silos, hindering collaboration and operational excellence.
To address this, Kestra offers a versatile and language-agnostic developer platform while simultaneously providing an intuitive user interface tailored to business professionals. This holistic solution aims to bridge the gap between different organizational units, thereby fostering a collaborative environment conducive to greater operational efficiency.

Their initial mission was to build the most efficient open-source workflow platform targeting the data engineering space. Since then, they’ve experienced tremendous growth well beyond that domain. Their users leverage Kestra not only to orchestrate data pipelines but also to power their mission-critical applications. They use the platform to orchestrate microservices and applications feeding data to their end products, and then they use Kestra for analytical workflows to understand how their products are performing. This way, Kestra serves as a universal orchestration solution for their business.

After talking to their customers and design partners, the'y’ve realized that software engineers have been largely neglected when it comes to orchestration. Most tools from that category are primarily built either for data engineers (tools like Airflow), DevOps (CI/CD and infrastructure management systems), or business users (drag-and-drop automation frameworks). Kestra is the first orchestrator that empowers engineers to build internal platforms powering their mission-critical operations and analytics. 

Software engineers appreciate the API-first design and robust, scalable, cloud-native architecture of our product. Event-driven capabilities are within Kestra’s DNA, enabling the creation, execution, and real-time monitoring of workflows at any scale. Kestra can efficiently process millions of events and ensures that businesses can reliably expand without sacrificing performance.

In terms of language compatibility, Kestra supports tasks written in a wide array of programming languages, including Python, R, Node.js, Julia, Rust, Bash, PowerShell, and anything that can run as a containerized process. Kestra's flows can run anywhere — from your laptop or on-prem VM to a Kubernetes cluster in a public cloud. Thanks to the extensible integrations ecosystem, including features such as custom plugins, triggers, tasks, blueprints, and fully customizable scripts and microservices, the product keeps evolving along with the business requirements of our users. 

In contrast to orchestrators that confine workflow creation to a single programming language, Kestra leverages a declarative YAML interface that democratizes orchestration and facilitates participation from developers utilizing diverse technology stacks. What our users appreciate most is that our product brings Infrastructure as Code best practices to all workflows — from those orchestrating mission-critical operations, business processes, and data pipelines to simple Zapier-style automations. Everything can be version-controlled and governed using software engineering best practices. Whether you make changes through the user interface, CI/CD, or via API calls, those changes are always automatically reflected in the codebase. This API-first approach fosters a synergistic workspace, allowing our users to build an internal platform loved by engineers and business stakeholders. 

Kestra strives to be the easiest-to-use orchestration tool on the market. Our users construct their first scheduled or event-driven workflow in a matter of minutes via our intuitive user interface or API, thereby obviating the need for complex deployment processes. We are steadfast in our belief that a simple orchestration API leads to greater reliability and extensibility than convoluted client-side frameworks.

The co-founders: Emmanuel Darras (CEO) &  Ludovic Dehon (CTO)

Web : https://kestra.io 

Video: https://youtu.be/h-P0eK2xN58?si=WhCCzXWZU93rwbTM

About Kestra Technologies

Kestra Technologies is the developer of Kestra, the open-source universal orchestrator that has garnered remarkable community success. Founded by Emmanuel Darras, the founder of Ankama, and Ludovic Dehon, a software tech lead and the creator of the opensource solution akHQ.io, Kestra Technologies is at the forefront of innovation with a strong commitment to open source.

Kestra is a powerful open-source orchestrator designed to simplify and automate intricate workflows effortlessly. Its universal approach empowers organizations to efficiently manage and coordinate tasks across diverse systems and platforms. Whether orchestrating data pipelines, cloud deployments, or IT operations, Kestra provides a flexible and scalable solution. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, Kestra is the preferred choice for businesses seeking operational agility and efficiency. Explore the future of orchestration with Kestra, where automation meets versatility.

For more information: www.kestra.io

About ISAI Venture

ISAI Venture invests from €100’000 to €3 million in early-stage companies, from pre-seed to Serie A, as lead or co-lead of the first financing rounds, in French Tech start-ups with very high potential. ISAI Venture is also active in the US market, alongside local investors, to support French entrepreneurs already established in the US. ISAI Venture has supported numerous successful start-ups, including Blablacar, Cardiologs, Datadome, Evaneos, Malt and 360Learning. 

 ISAI Venture is a strategy of ISAI Gestion (« ISAI »), one of the pioneers in the French Tech ecosystem. Co-founded in 2009 " by and for " Tech entrepreneurs, ISAI gathers today more than 300 Entrepreneurs-LPs alongside major Institutional Investors.
With offices in Paris and NYC, ISAI manages €630 million across four investment strategies: Early-Stage Venture, Corporate Venture, Growth Lending and Tech Buyout.  
The company is a UNPRI signatory and a committed player in inclusive and low-carbon Tech.
For more information: www.isai.fr

 
About Axeleo Capital (AXC) 

Axeleo Capital (AXC) is an emerging independent early-stage VC, trusted and backed by entrepreneurs across Europe. With €150 million in assets under management (AuM), 3 successful fund raises so far and 13 employees, the firm has made over 65 investments across the EU, and has achieved 17 successful exits within the past 24 months.

AXC provides a unique framework for European early stage startups. It offers a comprehensive range of support, including equity investments from seed to Series B stages, operational guidance and strategic assistance. The firm boasts an active ecosystem of more than 150 high-level partners, sector experts and mentors who have been instrumental in numerous success stories across Europe and the US. AXC focuses on 3 specific industry verticals where it has a deep knowledge: i) B2B Software (incl. cybersecurity, B2B FinTech, IA, data, SaaS) ii) PropTech & Construction Tech iii) GreenTech (incl. Chemicals and Materials, Energy, Agriculture & Food and Mobility)

For more information: www.axc.vc