By ByteBot
NetBird, an open-source zero trust networking platform, closed a $10 million Series A round led by Pace Capital on January 13, 2026. The pitch is simple: traditional VPNs are too complex for modern development teams, and zero trust networking doesn’t need enterprise overhead. NetBird eliminates firewall rules, port forwarding, and VPN gateways with WireGuard-based peer-to-peer connections. Developers are responding—the platform hit Hacker News’ front page today with 489 points and 185 comments.
The VPN Complexity Tax
Traditional VPNs are operationally expensive. DevOps teams spend hours configuring firewall rules, managing port forwarding, and maintaining VPN gateways. Scaling VPNs for global teams is costly and brittle, especially with multi-cloud and SaaS infrastructure. The process requires trained IT admins and creates a constant operational burden. For many development teams, VPN complexity has become a barrier to secure remote access.
NetBird takes a different approach. It uses WireGuard-based peer-to-peer tunnels to connect devices directly—no centralized VPN server, no firewall rules, no port forwarding. The architecture is configuration-free. Devices discover each other, establish encrypted tunnels, and communicate securely. The performance difference is significant: WireGuard delivers 20% lower latency and 15% higher throughput than IPsec, and is almost 4 times faster than OpenVPN. What used to take days to configure now takes minutes.
Developer-First Growth That Works
NetBird’s go-to-market strategy is bottom-up: engineers discover it, test it, then advocate for organizational deployment. The open-source model on GitHub eliminates friction—developers can try NetBird without sales calls or enterprise onboarding. This product-led growth through open source has worked for MongoDB and PostHog, and it’s working for NetBird.
Pace Capital’s $10 million Series A validates this approach. Pace focuses on infrastructure software and developer tools, with an average Series A check of $38.3 million. The firm’s thesis is clear: developers prefer to try tools and form their own opinions rather than trust marketing. NetBird’s Hacker News presence—489 points and 185 comments on the day of this writing—proves developer interest is real, not manufactured.
Zero Trust Momentum
NetBird’s timing is deliberate. The zero trust networking (ZTNA) market is expected to reach $4.84 billion in 2026, growing at 25.5% annually through 2030. Government mandates in the US, Singapore, and Germany now require ZTNA for critical infrastructure. Remote work and cloud migration are permanent shifts, not pandemic anomalies. The demand for secure, simple networking is structural, not cyclical.
Traditional ZTNA solutions target enterprises with complex implementations and high costs. NetBird brings zero trust to developer-scale teams—startups, SMBs, distributed engineering organizations that need security without enterprise overhead. The product integrates with existing identity providers for SSO and MFA, supports both cloud-hosted and self-hosted deployments, and offers granular access controls. It’s enterprise-grade security with developer-grade simplicity.
What $10M Buys
The Series A funding enables global expansion, feature development based on community feedback, and infrastructure scaling for a growing user base. NetBird will also build enterprise support capabilities—SLAs, compliance certifications, commercial support—to compete with established VPN vendors and Tailscale, the popular proprietary WireGuard-based alternative.
The competitive landscape is crowded. Tailscale has strong brand recognition but is proprietary. ZeroTier is open source but uses a custom protocol. Cloudflare Tunnel ties users to a larger ecosystem. NetBird’s differentiators are full open-source transparency, WireGuard-based architecture, self-hosting options, and a developer-first approach. The funding gives NetBird the resources to compete on awareness and enterprise readiness.
The Takeaway
NetBird’s Series A validates a broader trend: developer-first security tools can win commercial funding. The open-source-to-commercial-SaaS path is proven. Zero trust networking is no longer an enterprise-only category. If you’re frustrated with VPN complexity, NetBird is open source on GitHub with cloud and self-hosted options. The WireGuard performance is real—4 times faster than OpenVPN—and the setup is genuinely configuration-free.
The $4.84 billion ZTNA market is growing fast, and NetBird is positioning itself as the accessible alternative to enterprise solutions. For developers, the message is clear: zero trust doesn’t require enterprise budgets or operational overhead. Try it, test it, and if it works, advocate for it. That’s how product-led growth works, and that’s why Pace Capital wrote the check.
