For a company that saw its software downloaded over nine million times since the beginning of the year, Gradle Inc. has managed to keep an impressively low profile. But that is about to change in the wake of a newly announced $4.2 investment from True Ventures and Data Collective that will enable the startup kick off the next major phase of its growth plan.

Gradle intends to use the new capital in order to create a commercial cloud-based implementation of its namesake build automation system, which was first introduced under a free license six years ago to simplify the tedious chore of compiling raw source-code into fully functioning applications. Older alternatives like Maven require developers to specify how they wish to carry out the process using XML, a language with strict semantical rules that can make defining execution procedures difficult. The challenge becomes exponentially greater in large enterprise projects with a significant number of external components that each has to be handled individually.

Gradle promises to do away with that hassle by swapping out XML for the more accommodating Groovy scripting language, which provides a fairly flexible syntax for specifying how to build code that can be adapted to a wide range of different technologies. The startup boasts that LinkedIn Inc. uses its software to automate the build procedure of more than 60 separate components ranging from corporate programming staples such as Java and C++ to Hadoop. The complex relationships among the different elements are in turn handled with a built-in dependency manager that allows changes to be centrally applied across an entire project.

The networking giant is hardly the only one to have recognized the value proposition.  Gradle is also finding use at dozens of other major technology companies including Netflix Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google Inc., which has tapped the project as the default build option in Android Studio, the platform in which most of apps designated to run on its mobile operating system are developed. The startup’s upcoming managed offering will provide a new way to monetize the tremendous success of its software that could prove much more profitable than its current services-centric business model given the growing developer interest in cloud-based development tools.

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