Aspect Build Raises $3.85M for Bazel Development

Aspect Build has secured $3.85 million in funding to enhance software development using Bazel, a build tool that streamlines the coding process for developers

A slightly different toolset is required to manage source code, but monorepos are becoming an increasingly popular method. In 2015, Google open-sourced its internal build and test tool, Bazel, on top of its mono repo.

Over nine years, a thriving ecosystem of Bazel-adjacent firms, such as NX and EngFlow, has emerged to simplify the tool’s usability.

Aspect, co-founded by CEO Alex Eagle and CTO Greg Magolan, who had previously worked on Bazel, Angular, and related initiatives at Google, is also included in this group.

COO Jenny Magolan and CXO Eva Howe, who possess legal and marketing backgrounds, are cofounders. FirstMark Capital led a $3 million pilot investment that the company announced today. The crew had previously raised $850,000 from friends and family to help bootstrap the development of Aspect. This is in addition.

Although Bazel is exceedingly potent, it is extraordinarily challenging to operate. Its origins as an internal Google application are still evident in numerous respects.

Eagle half-jokingly stated, “Google has this reputation of hiring the smartest engineers, and as a result, we can throw the most complicated tools at them.” As with other ventures in this ecosystem, Aspect’s objective is to enhance the developer experience on top of Bazel.

Eagle informed me that this is not the sole distinguishing factor for the organization. This is in addition to Bazel’s numerous other advantages, such as its caching system, which reduces computation costs during the continuous integration process, and its support for multi-language repositories.

When asked how Aspect fits into the broader Bazel ecosystem, Eagle responded, “We are very open source as part of our culture, which I think is a significant contrast with EngFlow.

EngFlow appears to be more top-down, convincing management about the tool, and engineers are forced to follow along.” “We are collaborating closely with engineers.”

We devote significant time to developing the open-source foundations that catalyzed many of our customers to locate us.

Additionally, he emphasized that the team created significant portions of the Bazel infrastructure that is currently in use. However, he noted that Aspect’s primary objective is to address the entire developer productivity narrative.

Eagle’s perspective is that the development process is not limited to the inner and exterior loops, which refer to the local development workflow and the subsequent stages after the code is checked into a version control system.

“There is an outer loop akin to establishing a new project.” This individual discusses mono repo; they ask, “Should I create a new repository as my initial action when starting a new project?”

This implies that Aspect’s overarching objective is more ambitious and extends beyond the utilization of Bazel to expedite their build and test processes.

“Development teams are compelled to make numerous decisions due to the numerous moving parts. These interdependent decisions make it exceedingly challenging to establish a coherent, consistent, and productive system that spans the entire organization.”

If there are numerous software teams, each team shouldn’t select a distinct approach, as this would result in a lack of economies of scale.

Customers like Airtable, Coda, and Sourcegraph have already signed up with Aspect. Eagle informs me that the organization has signed approximately 20 enterprises thus far.

“For decades, engineering organizations have been transitioning to a multi-language reality, which has resulted in a plethora of productivity bottlenecks, including delayed releases, broken builds, and a lack of organization,” stated David Waltcher, Principal of FirstMark.

“Alex and Greg are exceptional engineers who have significantly contributed to the Bazel ecosystem. I have known them for many years.” We recognize the potential of Aspect to establish the de facto platform for unleashing scalable, multi-language repositories.