Tangled raises €3.8M to build a decentralised Git alternative

Tangled closed a €3.8 million seed round to build a decentralised Git collaboration network on the AT Protocol, according to The Next Web. The round was led by byFounders and includes Bain Capital Crypto, Antler, and angel investors such as Thomas Dohmke and Avery Pennarun.

Before this raise, Git hosting was concentrated around a few platforms, most prominently GitHub since its 2018 acquisition by Microsoft. European teams have used hosted alternatives like GitLab and community projects such as Codeberg to keep control of their code and processes. Tangled positions itself as another route, one that emphasises federation and developer control through decentralised architecture.

A direct challenge to GitHub

Tangled is building a Git collaboration layer that runs on the AT Protocol, which enables federation rather than single vendor hosting. Federation means repositories and collaboration metadata can live across multiple operators while users keep consistent identities and workflows. That reduces single vendor failure modes, and it separates platform governance from code custody.

Investors backing the round are a signal. byFounders and Bain Capital Crypto are not casual backers. Their involvement suggests Tangled is betting on open network effects rather than a traditional SaaS lock in. For procurement teams this matters because the economic and legal risks from a single cloud provider are now a board level conversation, not an engineering curiosity. The raise buys Tangled runway to prove those network effects in Europe.

What decentralisation changes for engineering teams and procurement

Decentralised collaboration changes the trade off between control and convenience. A federated Git network will require more operational effort than pushing to a single hosted provider, at least initially. Self hosting or choosing a smaller operator adds admin overhead, but it gives teams explicit control over where code and metadata reside, which simplifies GDPR and data sovereignty audits.

Tangled will not replace every workflow built around a central provider overnight. Teams that prioritise integrated CI, marketplace apps, and minimal ops will still prefer the convenience of [GitHub] or [GitLab]. Teams that handle sensitive IP, regulated data, or that must reduce single vendor risk should consider federated options. Tangled also expands the procurement playbook by offering an architecture that can be evaluated on interoperability metrics, not only uptime and price. That matters for security reviews and for contracts that must prove verifiable sovereignty.

Why this matters

For teams using [GitHub] for sensitive projects, Tangled presents a practical alternative that turns single vendor risk into a negotiable system property. Procurement and security teams should add Tangled to their vendor trials alongside [GitLab] to measure integration effort and compliance outcomes within 90 days. The raise signals that federated Git is now fundable and operationally testable, which changes how European organisations assess long term vendor risk.

Sources

https://thenextweb.com/news/europes-tangled-raises-e3-8m-from-byfounders-and-githubs-ex-ceo