CircleCI

2011

• The company was founded in September 2011. The product was first released for beta testing on October 11, 2011.{{cite web |title=CircleCI on Twitter |url=https://twitter.com/CircleCI/status/123868492083630081 |website=Twitter |language=en}} The first customers appeared three months after starting the company, while it was 6 months before the first payment.{{cite web |last1=Marks |first1=Trisha |title=Finding Product-Market Fit in Start-Up Marketing |url=https://www.properexpression.com/growth-marketing-blog/product-market-fit-start-up-marketing |website=www.properexpression.com |access-date=18 January 2022 |language=en}}

2013

• Typed Clojure was used at CircleCI in production systems from September 2013 to September 2015.{{cite journal |last1=Bonnaire-Sergeant |first1=Ambrose |last2=Davies |first2=Rowan |last3=Tobin-Hochstadt |first3=Sam |title=Practical Optional Types for Clojure |journal=Programming Languages and Systems |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |date=2016 |volume=9632 |pages=68–94 |doi=10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_4|arxiv=1812.03571|isbn=978-3-662-49497-4 |s2cid=18361363 }}

2014

• In 2014, CircleCI acquired Distiller, a mobile continuous integration tool,{{cite news |last1=Hall |first1=Susan |title=CircleCI buys Distiller to Support Mobile App Development |url=https://thenewstack.io/circleci-buys-distiller-to-support-mobile-app-development/ |access-date=17 October 2022 |work=The New Stack |date=17 December 2014}} where Jim Rose and Rob Zuber joined to assume CEO and CTO.{{Cite web |title=CircleCI milestones |url=https://circleci.com/milestones/ |access-date=2022-06-07 |website=CircleCI |language=en}} Paul Biggar left the company after six months, but remained on the board.{{cite news |last1=Kennedy |first1=John |title=Going Dark: How Paul Biggar is building the future of software |url=https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/paul-biggar-dark-startup-grind-circle-ci |access-date=17 January 2022 |work=Silicon Republic |date=2 July 2018 |language=en}}

2016

• In 2016, there was some controversy when Uber, who shared an office building with the company, redesigned their logo to be quite similar to CircleCI's.{{cite news|last1=Wieczner|first1=Jen|title=People are Accusing Uber of Stealing This Startup's Logo|url=http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/people-are-accusing-uber-of-stealing-this-startups-logo/|accessdate=1 February 2017|work=Fortune|date=February 19, 2016}} Another very similar logo can be found in the 2017 film The Circle.{{cite news |last1=Lincoln |first1=Kevin |title=Isn't It Weird the Logo in The Circle Looks Just Like Uber's? |url=https://www.vulture.com/2017/04/the-logo-in-the-circle-looks-just-like-ubers.html |access-date=17 October 2022 |work=Vulture |date=28 April 2017 |language=en-us}}

2018

• In June 2018, CircleCI opened their first international office in Tokyo, and in October 2018 they opened an office in Boston, MA.
• In October 2018, CircleCI became the first CI/CD tool authorized by FedRAMP.{{cite news |last1=Sargent |first1=Jenna |title=SD Times news digest: CircleCI authorized by FedRamp, KotlinConf announcements, and Google extends PyTorch support |url=https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/sd-times-news-digest-circleci-authorized-by-fedramp-kotlinconf-announcements-and-google-extends-pytorch-support/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=SD Times |date=4 October 2018}}

2019

• In May 2019, CircleCI opened an office in Denver, CO.
• In August 2019, CircleCI made support for Windows builds generally available.{{cite news |last1=Speed |first1=Richard |title=They're climbing through the Windows: CircleCI goes native on Microsoft's OS |url=https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/07/circleci/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=www.theregister.com |language=en}}
• In November 2019, CircleCI opened an office in London.{{cite news |last1=Speed |first1=Richard |title=The lure of Brexit Britain proves too great for DevOps pipeline wrangler CircleCI |url=https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/21/circleci/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=www.theregister.com |language=en}}

2020

• In February 2020, CircleCI launched support for AWS GovCloud.
• In May 2020, CircleCI became the first CI/CD company to offer fully-compensated paid leave for employees recovering from transition-related medical procedures.
• In October 2020, CircleCI released an insights dashboard for customers to monitor and optimize their CI/CD pipelines.
• In November 2020, CircleCI introduced self-hosted runners (including Arm support) on its cloud platform.

2021

• In April 2021, CircleCI's cloud-hosted service announced SOC 2 Type II compliance.

2022

• In January 2022, CircleCI announced a more generous free tier.{{Cite web |date=2022-01-11 |title=CircleCI now offers the most generous free plan anywhere |url=https://circleci.com/blog/most-generous-free-cicd-plan/ |access-date=2022-07-11 |website=CircleCI |language=en}}

2023

• In December 2023, founder Paul Biggar was removed from the board of CircleCI.{{cite web |last1=Rose |first1=Jim |title=Effective December 22, Paul Biggar is no longer a director at CircleCI. |url=https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jimdotrose_effective-december-22-paul-biggar-is-no-activity-7144101534912458752--tfm |website=LinkedIn |access-date=25 December 2023 |language=en |date=22 December 2023}} Biggar alleges this was reprisal for a blog post where he publicly spoke out against Israel actions in Gaza.{{cite news |last1=Qazi |first1=Shereena |title=Code of silence: How one techie unmasked Silicon Valley's hypocrisy on Gaza |url=https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/code-of-silence-how-one-techie-unmasked-silicon-valleys-hypocrisy-on-gaza-16385719 |access-date=25 December 2023 |work=TRT World |date=25 December 2023 |language=en}}{{cite web |title=Paul Biggar (@paulbiggar@hachyderm.io) |url=https://hachyderm.io/@paulbiggar/111627367674590120 |website=Hachyderm.io |access-date=25 December 2023 |language=en |date=23 December 2023}}

CircleCI raised $50k from a small investor a few months after starting,{{cite web |last1=Biggar |first1=Paul |title=I founded CircleCI (valued at $1.7B) and Darklang. AMA! |url=https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-founded-circleci-valued-at-1-7b-and-darklang-ama-a737b04438?commentId=-MgBk6Pjw_w0TxN-n8OD |website=Indie Hackers |access-date=18 January 2022}} $1.5m in seed funding in 2013,{{cite news |last1=Darrow |first1=Barb |title=CircleCI gets $1.5M to build out continuous integration service |url=https://gigaom.com/2013/02/25/circleci-gets-1-5m-to-build-out-continuous-integration-service/ |access-date=17 January 2022 |work=Gigaom |date=25 February 2013 |archive-date=18 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118214107/https://gigaom.com/2013/02/25/circleci-gets-1-5m-to-build-out-continuous-integration-service/ |url-status=dead }} a $6m Series A round from DFJ in 2014, a $18M Series B financing round from Scale Venture Partners in 2016, a $31M Series C led by Top Tier Capital Partners in 2018,{{cite news |last1=Tansey |first1=Bernadette |title=Xconomy: CircleCI Nabs $31M to Enhance DevOps Platform With Automation Tools |url=https://xconomy.com/san-francisco/2018/01/17/circleci-nabs-31m-to-enhance-devops-platform-with-automation-tools/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=Xconomy |date=17 January 2018 |language=en}} a $56M Series D led by Owl Rock Capital and NextEquity Partners in 2019,{{cite news |last1=Wiggers |first1=Kyle |title=CircleCI raises $56 million to continuously test software builds for bugs |url=https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/23/circleci-raises-56-million-to-continuously-test-software-builds-for-bugs/ |access-date=17 January 2022 |work=VentureBeat |date=23 July 2019}} a $100M Series E round led by IVP in 2020,{{cite news |last1=Wiggers |first1=Kyle |title=CircleCI raises $100 million for automated app testing and deployment |url=https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/07/circleci-100-million-automate-app-testing-and-deployment/ |access-date=17 January 2022 |work=VentureBeat |date=7 April 2020}} and a $100M Series F round led by Greenspring Associates in 2021.{{cite news |last1=Sawars |first1=Paul |title=Continuous software integration/delivery platform CircleCI nabs $100M |url=https://venturebeat.com/2021/05/11/continuous-integration-and-delivery-platform-circleci-raises-100-million/ |access-date=17 January 2022 |work=VentureBeat |date=11 May 2021}} In total this is $315 million in funding.

CircleCI acquired Distiller in 2014, Vamp in 2021, and Ponicode in 2022.{{cite news |last1=Lardinois |first1=Frederic |title=CircleCI acquires Ponicode |url=https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/09/circleci-acquires-ponicode/ |access-date=22 April 2022 |work=TechCrunch}}

In 2013, CircleCI suffered a major data breach due to its provider MongoHQ, but was able to quickly respond and replace its security keys, resulting in almost no lost customers.{{cite web |last1=Harrison |first1=Kim |title=The Time Our Provider Screwed Us |url=https://launchdarkly.com/blog/the-time-our-provider-screwed-us/ |website=LaunchDarkly |access-date=18 January 2022 |language=en}}

In August 2019, there was a data breach in a third-party analytics vendor account used by CircleCI.{{cite news |last1=Oates |first1=John |title=Today's data whoopsie is brought to you by CircleCI: Source safe, but look out for phishers |url=https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/05/circleci_security_incident/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=www.theregister.com |language=en}}

In January 2023, CircleCI announced a recent system breach and advised customers to rotate "any and all secrets" stored in CircleCI.{{Cite web |last=Page |first=Carly |date=2023-01-05 |title=CircleCI warns customers to rotate 'any and all secrets' after hack |url=https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/05/circleci-breach/ |access-date=2023-01-05 |website=TechCrunch |language=en-US}}

CircleCI monitors GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and Atlassian Bitbucket repositories and launches builds for each new commit.{{cite news |last1=Bohon |first1=Cory |title=CI/CD platforms: How to choose the right continuous integration and delivery system for your business |url=https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-choose-the-right-cicd-platform/ |access-date=19 January 2022 |work=TechRepublic |date=20 December 2021 |language=en}} CircleCI automatically tests builds in either Docker containers or virtual machines and deploys passing builds to target environments. A dashboard and API allow tracking the status of builds and metrics related to builds.{{cite web |last1=Riggins |first1=Jennifer |title=CircleCI Insights Helps DevOps Teams Quantify High-Performance |url=https://thenewstack.io/circleci-insights-helps-devops-teams-quantify-high-performance/ |website=The New Stack |access-date=18 January 2022 |date=8 April 2020}} A Slack integration notifies teams if issues arise.{{cite news|last1=Rubens|first1=Paul|title=7 ways to get more from Slack|url=http://www.cio.com/article/3086158/collaboration/7-ways-to-get-more-from-slack.html|accessdate=1 February 2017|work=CIO magazine|date=June 21, 2016|archive-date=28 February 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170228202937/http://www.cio.com/article/3086158/collaboration/7-ways-to-get-more-from-slack.html|url-status=dead}}

SSH support allows locally running jobs, and security measures prevent tampering. CircleCI also offers a workflow approval feature that pauses the job(s) until manual approval is given.{{cite web |last1=Wainewright |first1=Phil |title=How CircleCI speeds DevOps cycle times with CI/CD automation |url=https://diginomica.com/circleci-speeds-devops-ci-cd-automation |website=diginomica.com |access-date=18 January 2022 |language=en |date=7 January 2020}}

CircleCI supports Go, Java, Ruby, Python, Scala, Node.js, PHP, Haskell, and any other language that runs on Linux or macOS.

The company offers a managed cloud service with a free tier available.{{cite news |last1=Dotson |first1=Kyt |title=CircleCI is offering a new free CI/CD plan for DevOps teams with more features |url=https://siliconangle.com/2022/01/11/circleci-offering-new-free-ci-cd-plan-devops-teams-features/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=SiliconANGLE |date=11 January 2022}} The platform can also be self-hosted on a private server (behind a corporate firewall), or as a private deployment in the cloud.{{cite book |last1=Arora |first1=Chandermani |last2=Hennessy |first2=Kevin |last3=Noring |first3=Christoffer |last4=Uluca |first4=Doguhan |title=Building Large-Scale Web Applications with Angular: Your one-stop guide to building scalable and production-grade Angular web apps |date=21 December 2018 |publisher=Packt Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-78995-832-4 |page=518 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KNCBDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA518 |language=en}} The cloud service was initially written from scratch but now uses HashiCorp's Nomad and Kubernetes.{{cite web |last1=Oliver |first1=Kiran |last2=Williams |first2=Alex |title=CircleCI's Technical Architecture Is Built for Scalability |url=https://thenewstack.io/circieci-technical-architecture-build-for-scale/ |website=The New Stack |access-date=18 January 2022 |date=16 November 2017}}

The cloud service can be set up within minutes, but is less customizable than Jenkins.{{cite book |last1=Belmont |first1=Jean-Marcel |title=Hands-On Continuous Integration and Delivery: Build and release quality software at scale with Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI |date=29 August 2018 |publisher=Packt Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-78913-307-3 |page=266 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hh9sDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA266 |language=en}}

Orbs are shareable snippets of YAML that can be used to simplify CircleCI builds and perform deployments.{{cite book |last1=Uluca |first1=Doguhan |title=Angular for Enterprise-Ready Web Applications: Build and deliver production-grade and cloud-scale evergreen web apps with Angular 9 and beyond, 2nd Edition |date=29 May 2020 |publisher=Packt Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-83864-660-8 |page=459 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9YLoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA459 |language=en}} CircleCI had integrations with 45 partners as of 2019. CircleCI's target deployment environments include Amazon Web Services, Heroku, Azure, Google Compute Engine, Docker images, and virtual Linux, Android, Windows, or macOS machines with VMware. In 2018 CircleCI's config.yml was the fastest growing YAML file on GitHub.{{cite news |last1=Claburn |first1=Thomas |title=Behold, the world's most popular programming language – and it is...wait, er, YAML?!? |url=https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/19/popular_programming_language_yaml/ |access-date=18 January 2022 |work=www.theregister.com |language=en}}

The proprietary configuration syntax introduces vendor lock-in, meaning that switching CI services requires rewriting the pipeline.{{cite book |last1=Ostrowski |first1=Adrian |last2=Gaczkowski |first2=Piotr |title=Software Architecture with C++: Design modern systems using effective architecture concepts, design patterns, and techniques with C++20 |date=23 April 2021 |publisher=Packt Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-78961-246-2 |page=462 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GrAmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA462 |language=en}}

==See also==

• Travis CI
• Comparison of continuous integration software
• Software deployment

{{reflist}}

• [https://github.com/circleci/ GitHub organization]
• [https://circleci.com/docs/ CircleCI documentation]

Category:Compiling tools

Category:Continuous integration