Tempest, the company helping teams deliver better code, faster, is emerging from stealth backed by $3.2 million in funding, with the aim of delivering a complete developer platform that can be deployed in hours instead of months. Brought to you by the team behind Fleetsmith, a company acquired by Apple in 2020, Tempest seeks to alleviate the burden of infrastructure tasks from developers with a unified platform that boosts developer productivity and maximizes return on engineering investments.
Tempest enables developers to ship better code faster, acknowledging that engineering resources can no longer be wasted on infrastructure management instead of innovation. With its holistic platform, developers can build, deploy, and manage independently, further fortified by built-in security and compliance guardrails. Offering everything from a service catalog to end-to-end automation, Tempest enables enterprises to truly support their engineering teams.
"Poor developer experience isn't just a developer problem—it's an existential business risk," said Tempest co-founder and CEO Ken Kouot. “Take a simple feature deployment: when your engineers spend three days wrestling with CI/CD pipelines instead of shipping customer value, that's not just lost engineering hours—it's delayed revenue and missed market opportunities. At Tempest, we're giving developers the foundation they need to deliver innovation at the speed your market demands. In today's environment, streamlined software delivery isn't a nice-to-have—it's the difference between leading your industry and playing catch-up."
The Tempest platform is composed of two key technologies: a comprehensive internal developer portal and out-of-the-box automations. Tempest’s internal developer portal empowers true self-service workflows with service visibility and a DX platform. From there, Tempest makes insights actionable with built-in automations, going beyond what traditional developer platforms offer, according to the vendor. Accompanied by a developer-friendly SDK, enterprise teams can seamlessly extend Tempest’s expansive ecosystem of integrations, reducing setup time.
"My infrastructure security background has shown me how fragmented deployment tooling can create both operational friction and security vulnerabilities," added Jake King, founder of Cmd. "Tempest has cracked this challenge by delivering a unified platform that combines sound security controls with the flexibility modern development teams demand to move quickly and efficiently."
Tempest’s value prop is reflected by the company’s recent infusion of funds, led by Abstract Ventures with participation from Box Group, Background Capital, and strategic investments from Max Mullen (co-founder of Instacart), Jason Chan (former VP of InfoSec at Netflix), and Mike Abbott (former VP of Engineering at Apple).
“In my experience, the most effective organizations provide developers with clear, secure pathways—what we now call 'paved roads' and something we introduced early on in my career at Netflix. Tempest makes it easy to implement those pathways, removing the friction that slows down teams and putting security and compliance on autopilot,” said Chan.
“Tempest is the missing developer experience tool that every engineering team needs—which is precisely why I'm so excited to be an investor,” said Mullen.
To learn more about Tempest, please visit https://tempestdx.com/.