GitLab: What It Does, Who Runs It, Funding and News

GitLab is a publicly traded software company that makes a single platform for writing, testing, securing and shipping software. Its annual report for fiscal 2026 (the Form 10-K for the year ended January 31, 2026) puts revenue at $955.2 million, up 26% on the year before, with 10,682 customers paying more than $5,000 a year at the end of that year.

Y Combinator's (YC) summary, "A complete DevOps platform delivered as a single application", still fits the core product, though GitLab now leads with AI agents and calls its product a DevSecOps platform. Co-founder Sid Sijbrandij handed the CEO job to Bill Staples in December 2024 and stayed on as Executive Chair. The sections below cover GitLab's key facts, products, leadership, ownership, funding and IPO, and news since mid-2025.

GitLab key facts

YC's page and GitLab's filings differ on a few points. YC lists San Francisco as the location and a team size of 2,000. The 10-K, a newer and formal filing, says GitLab has no headquarters and had about 2,580 team members at the end of January 2026. In June 2026 GitLab said it expected about 14% of that workforce to be affected by a restructuring, covered in the news section below.

What GitLab does

GitLab sells software that development, security and operations teams use in one place to manage source code, run CI/CD pipelines, scan for vulnerabilities and deploy. The 10-K describes three tiers (Free, Premium and Ultimate) and three ways to run it:

• GitLab.com. The cloud-hosted service GitLab runs for customers.
• GitLab Self-Managed. Customers install and run GitLab on their own infrastructure.
• GitLab Dedicated. A single-tenant version fully managed by GitLab.

AI features sit on top of the platform. GitLab Duo Pro and Duo Enterprise are add-ons for Premium and Ultimate customers, sold per seat, and GitLab Duo Agent Platform, which the 10-K says became generally available in January 2026, combines AI chat, purpose-built agents and workflow automation with enterprise controls. In the quarter ended July 31, 2026, GitLab introduced GitLab Flex, a commercial model with one annual commitment covering platform seats, GitLab Credits and eligible new capabilities (Q2 fiscal 2027 release).

GitLab's fiscal year ends January 31, so fiscal 2027 runs from February 2026 to January 2027. GitLab reports its customer counts by how much they spend. In its results for the quarter ended July 31, 2026, GitLab reported 11,114 customers paying more than $5,000 a year in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and 1,571 paying more than $100,000, with a dollar-based net retention rate of 117% (Q2 fiscal 2027 release). In China, GitLab's product is offered through JiHu, a joint venture formed in February 2021 with two Chinese investment partners, which GitLab consolidates in its accounts (Form 10-K).

Who runs GitLab

Bill Staples has been GitLab's chief executive since December 5, 2024. GitLab's announcement says he was previously CEO of New Relic, and that Sid Sijbrandij stepped back from the day-to-day CEO role to become Executive Chair of the board. GitLab's leadership page listed this team in October 2026:

Start dates for Ross, Steward and Padisetty come from the 2026 proxy statement, which also says James Shen served as interim CFO from September 20, 2025 until Ross started. The other dates are those of GitLab's press releases announcing each appointment. Lloyd was previously Chief Business and Operations Officer at New Relic (GitLab release). GitLab's board page lists eight directors: Sijbrandij (Executive Chair), Staples, Godfrey Sullivan, Karen Blasing, Matthew Jacobson, Sue Bostrom, Sunny Bedi and David Henshall. The proxy names Sullivan as Lead Independent Director.

Who owns GitLab

GitLab is a public company, but co-founder Sid Sijbrandij holds a slim majority of the votes. GitLab has two classes of common stock: Class A, which trades on Nasdaq with one vote per share, and Class B, with ten votes per share. GitLab's 2026 proxy statement shows that Sijbrandij beneficially owned 16,750,651 Class B shares as of April 1, 2026, mostly through a revocable trust and including 1,500,000 shares underlying exercisable options. That was 93.76% of the Class B stock and 50.43% of total voting power. The 10-K counted 153.4 million Class A and 16.7 million Class B shares outstanding on March 3, 2026. That Class B count is slightly below Sijbrandij's 16.75 million because his total includes 1.5 million shares he could get by exercising options, which are not yet outstanding.

GitLab funding and IPO

GitLab raised a seed round and five announced venture rounds (Series A to E) before its October 2021 IPO. Its September 2019 release says it had raised $426 million by then. Valuations are as GitLab stated them.

GitLab news, 2025 to 2026

• August 14, 2025: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted GitLab's motion to dismiss a proposed securities class action filed on September 4, 2024, which alleged misrepresentations about, among other things, GitLab's use of AI features. Final judgment for GitLab was entered on January 26, 2026, and three related shareholder derivative suits (suits brought on the company's behalf against its directors and officers) were dismissed the same day (Form 10-K).
• December 2, 2025: GitLab named Jessica Ross, previously CFO of Frontdoor, as Chief Financial Officer, effective January 15, 2026 (GitLab press releases, proxy statement).
• January 15, 2026: GitLab Duo Agent Platform became generally available, the same day Siva Padisetty started as Chief Technology Officer (GitLab press releases).
• March 3, 2026: Fiscal 2026 revenue rose 26% to $955.2 million, and GitLab said its board had authorized a $400 million share repurchase program (fiscal 2026 results).
• May 11, 2026: GitLab announced a reduction in force (Form 8-K, May). The board approved the plan on June 1: about 14% of the global workforce as of January 31, 2026 may be affected, GitLab will leave 22 countries, and it expects $30 million to $35 million in pre-tax charges, with the plan substantially complete by January 31, 2027 (Form 8-K, June).
• June 2, 2026: First-quarter revenue rose 23% to $264.2 million, with a GAAP net loss attributable to GitLab of $5.0 million (Q1 release).
• September 1, 2026: Revenue for May to July rose 21% to $286.3 million, and GitLab gave a fiscal 2027 revenue outlook of $1.129 billion to $1.133 billion. The quarter's GAAP net loss attributable to GitLab was $36.8 million, including $19.4 million of restructuring charges (Q2 release).
• October 6, 2026: GitLab announced what it calls the foundation for a governed software factory, including GitLab Secrets Manager, generally available on GitLab.com, and GitLab Artifact Central, in beta (GitLab release).