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Chef

Logo: chef.io4

Configuration management tool

Progress Chef (formerly Chef) is a configuration management tool written in Ruby and Erlang. It uses a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes". Chef is used to streamline the task of configuring and maintaining a company's servers, and can integrate with cloud-based platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, OpenStack, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace to automatically provision and configure new machines.3 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2008Founded1
  • Industrysoftware industry1
  • HeadquartersSeattle1
  • Websitewww.chef.io
  • Incorporated inDE5
  • Business address1008 Western Avenue, Suite 600, Seattle, Wa 981045

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Progress Chef (formerly Chef) is a configuration management tool written in Ruby and Erlang. It uses a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes". Chef is used to streamline the task of configuring and maintaining a company's servers, and can integrate with cloud-based platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, OpenStack, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace to automatically provision and configure new machines. Chef contains solutions for both small and large scale systems.3

The story

Opscode

Chef was founded by Nathen Haneysmith, Adam Jacob and Barry Crist, and based in Seattle, United States. It operates as an Infrastructure automation platform for applications until today.

In February 2013, Opscode released version 11 of Chef. Changes in this release included a complete rewrite of the core API server in Erlang.

In Sep 2015, Chef Chef was valued at $360 million after a $40 million venture capital funding round.

In November 2015, the company acquired a German security startup, VulcanoSec.

In April 2019, the company announced that the source code for their software would continue to be released under the Apache 2.0 license, while binaries would only be available under the terms of a proprietary license. In response, the Cinc project began releasing Apache 2.0 licensed binaries of several Chef products.

In 2019, it was discovered by a journalist that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was paying Chef approximately $95,000 per year for a software license. At that time, a former Chef employee deleted his code repository in protest of the contract. The company did not announce any changes to its contracting processes or partners.

Chef Automate

Chef offered a single commercial product, Chef Automate, released at ChefConf in July 2016. Chef Automate included a full-stack continuous deployment pipeline, and automated testing for compliance and security. Chef Automate built on two of Chef's open source projects - Chef and InSpec - and integrated with the company's third open source project, Habitat. Habitat offered "application automation" to simplify running complex applications in different environments including containers, traditional data servers, or PaaS.

Chef offered three versions of its product: Chef Basics (free, open source), Hosted Chef ($72/node, minimum 20 node purchase), and Chef Automate ($137/node, annual subscription).

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Progress

On September 8, 2020, Progress announced the acquisition of Chef, with an intended final date in October.

A press release gave the price of acquisition at $220 million. The merged company was named Progress Chef.

From Wikipedia’s article on Chef (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6

Products and brands

  • Chef

Listed on Wikidata.1

Chef is supported on multiple platforms according to a supported platforms matrix for client and server products. Major platform support for clients includes AIX, Amazon Linux, Debian, CentOS/RHEL, FreeBSD, macOS, Solaris, SUSE Linux, Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu. Additional client platforms include Arch Linux and Fedora. Chef Server is supported on amd64 on RHEL/CentOS, Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux and Ubuntu.

From Wikipedia’s article on Chef (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6

Former names

  • OPSCODE, INC.Mar 27, 2012 to Mar 27, 20125

Timeline

  1. 2008Founded Founded1

SEC filer profile

How Chef is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, from its EDGAR record and the cover page of its latest annual report.

  • Name on EDGARCHEF SOFTWARE INC.2
  • CIK0001545207
  • Employer ID (EIN)26-35418642
  • Incorporated inDelaware2
  • Fiscal year endsDecember 312
  • Business address1008 Western Avenue, Suite 600, Seattle, WA 981042
  • Phone206-508-47592
  • On EDGAR sinceMar 27, 20122
  • Filings2 in all: D (2)2

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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    Company websiteChef logo
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