Flox, a startup that helps software teams create development environments, has raised $25 million in funding to finance growth initiatives. 

Addition led the Series B round. Flox said in its announcement of the deal today that NEA, Hetz, Illuminate Financial and D. E. Shaw participated as well. The startup spun out of D. E. Shaw, a major investment firm, in 2021. 

Enterprise software teams write and test code in development environments. Those are replicas of their company’s production infrastructure that often run locally on engineers’ computers. Setting up a development environment can take upwards of hours in some cases. 

Officially named FloxDev Inc., the company offers a platform that promises to ease the task. It enables engineers to install a development environment on their machines with a single terminal command. 

It works by encapsulating the configuration of a development environment in a kind of template. Instead of recreating the environment from scratch on every workstation, developers simply download the template. They can also customize it if necessary. 

Flox-powered development environments include the packages, or software modules, that are needed for an application project. They can also be equipped with development tools and environment variables. An environment variable is a configuration setting that influences how an application runs. Such settings can, for example, specify the folder in which a program should keep its data.

After engineers create a development environment with Flox, they can share it with colleagues. Moving development environments between different computers is usually challenging because of the compatibility issues that often arise during the process. Flox says that its platform avoids such issues. 

Flox has combined its core features for building development environments with a build system. A build system is a tool that turns developers’ code files into a functioning application.

In cross-platform projects, developers must tailor the build process for every operating system and instruction set architecture on which their software will run. Historically, the task was done manually. Flox automates the process, which saves time and reduces the risk of code issues. 

The company says its platform lends itself to, among other tasks, building development environments for artificial intelligence projects. It’s working on a feature that will enable customers to install Nvidia Corp.’s CUDA Toolkit. That’s a set of compilers, libraries and other development tools that can be used to write software for the chipmaker’s graphics cards. 

Flox says it’s one of the few companies with permission to distribute CUDA Toolkit via prebuilt binaries. That means the software is available in a ready-to-use form that removes the need for developers to manually build it. 

The company will use its newly raised capital to hire more go-to-market and engineering staff. The new technical hires will help the company launch features for detecting software vulnerabilities. Additionally, it plans to introduce governance capabilities that will help companies ensure developers’ code complies with internal policies.

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