- Companies
- CIQ
Last CIQ valuation
$2B
Seed · Jul 2025
Last CIQ funding round
$2M
Seed · Jul 2025
Cumulative funding CIQ raised
$28M
across 2 funding rounds
Key investors in CIQ
Battle Born Venture
Two Bear Capital
About CIQ
CIQ is an Austin-based provider of enterprise support for open-source infrastructure software including Rocky Linux, Kata Containers, and OpenShift. Founded by former CentOS leaders in 2021, it delivers 24/7 SLAs to Fortune 500 clients like financial institutions and cloud providers worldwide.
Founded
2020
HQ
Website
Status
Privately held
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Services, Subscription
Valuation
$2B (Jul 2025)
CIQ Valuation
CIQ is currently valued at $2B, based on its seed round in July 2025.
The $2M round included Battle Born Venture.
CIQ's valuation has grown 13x from $150M at its Series A in May 2022 to $2B in July 2025, across 2 priced rounds.
CIQ valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | Seed | $2B |
| May 2022 | Series A | $150M |
CIQ Funding History
CIQ has raised a total of $28M across 2 funding rounds.
CIQ's first fundraising round was a $26M Series A in May 2022. The most recent completed round was a $2M seed round in July 2025.
CIQ funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | Seed | Battle Born Venture | $2M | $2B | CIQ is a software infrastructure company founded in 2020 and headquartered in Reno, Nevada. The company leads the development and commercial support of Rocky Linux, an open-source operating system, and builds a comprehensive product suite tailored for enterprises running high-performance, cloud, hybrid, and AI workloads. Its offerings include Enterprise Linux distributions, automation tools such as Ascender, and orchestration and cluster management platforms including Fuzzball and Warewulf. Battle Born Venture, Nevada's state venture capital program, invested in CIQ in September 2025, valuing the company at $2,000,000. The investment was made through Battle Born Venture, which is funded through the State Small Business Credit Initiative and focuses on supporting Nevada-based startups with strong growth potential. |
| May 2022 | Series A | Two Bear Capital (lead) | $26M | $150M | CIQ, operating as Ctrl IQ Inc., is a software infrastructure startup that develops stable, scalable, and secure solutions across the technology stack, including bare metal provisioning with Warewulf, container solutions with Singularity/Apptainer, operating systems like Rocky Linux, orchestration, and federated computing. As the founding sponsor and services partner of Rocky Linux, the fastest-growing enterprise Linux distribution and a free alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CIQ aims to empower users by enhancing the software infrastructure stack for enterprise, cloud, hyperscale, and high-performance computing environments. The company positions itself as a customer-centric provider disrupting traditional support and services with a complete stack from imaging to global hybrid computing platforms. On May 11-12, 2022, CIQ closed a $26 million Series A funding round led by Two Bear Capital, bringing total financing to $33 million and post-money valuation to $150 million. Previous investors included OpenDrives and IAG Capital Partners, which led a 2021 bridge round. The funding will expand development teams, customer success, scale operations to meet demand, innovate products, and transition CIQ from an early-stage startup to a more mature company serving datacenters, clouds, and computing resources. Two Bear Capital, founded by Michael Goguen, focuses on early-stage firms in software infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity, and related fields. CIQ has gained support from Google, which in April 2022 designated Rocky Linux as a tier-1, optimized, and supported OS. The 30-person team at the time emphasized solving infrastructure problems at scale, with proceeds directed toward product development and customer growth. |
Who has invested in CIQ?
2 investors have backed CIQ across its funding rounds, including Battle Born Venture and Two Bear Capital.
Lead investors include Two Bear Capital.
CIQ Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Start Free TrialCIQ Competitors
CIQ competitors include listed companies like Beijing Ultrapower, Freshworks and PagerDuty, and private ones like Kaseya, JumpCloud and BigPanda.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private | - | - | $1.8B | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $868M | $165M | $2.4B | 2.1x | ||
| Private | $56M | - | $2.6B | 46.9x | ||
| Publicly listed | $839M | $41M | $3.3B | 2.9x | ||
| Private | - | - | $1.2B | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $493M | $17M | $1.1B | 2.2x |
CIQ Public Comps
CIQ is still privately-owned, but its public comps include ESDS Software, Beijing Ultrapower, PagerDuty, Datagroup, Freshworks, Wiscom System, Bonree Data Technology, Beijing Baolande Software, ActiveOps and Suresofttech.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $49M | $25M | 38.3x | 13.8x | 76.7x | 56.6x | |||
| $868M | $165M | 2.3x | 2.1x | 11.9x | 10.6x | |||
| $493M | $17M | 2.2x | 2.2x | 64.6x | 7.7x | |||
| $652M | $96M | 1.4x | 1.4x | 9.6x | 9.4x | |||
| $839M | $41M | 3.2x | 2.9x | 65.7x | 11.3x | |||
| $233M | $13M | 1.8x | - | 32.1x | - | |||
| $19M | ($13M) | 19.0x | 16.4x | (28.1x) | (45.3x) | |||
| $34M | ($9M) | 6.8x | - | (25.4x) | - | |||
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Common questions about CIQ
| When was CIQ founded? | CIQ was founded in 2020. |
| Where is CIQ headquartered? | CIQ is headquartered in Reno, NV, United States. |
| Is CIQ publicly listed? | No, CIQ is a private, VC-backed company. |
| What is CIQ's valuation? | CIQ was last valued at $2B in its seed round in July 2025. |
| How much funding has CIQ raised? | CIQ has raised $28M across 2 funding rounds. |
| What was CIQ's last funding round? | CIQ's last funding round was a $2M seed round in July 2025. |
| Who are CIQ's investors? | CIQ's investors include Two Bear Capital and Battle Born Venture. |
| Which companies are comparable to CIQ? | Companies comparable to CIQ include Kaseya, Beijing Ultrapower, JumpCloud, Freshworks, BigPanda and PagerDuty. |
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