GitLab, a European startup taking on code collaboration platform GitHub, just raised $1.5 million

GitLab, a startup that lets programmers share their code and allow other people to contribute to their projects, just raised $1.5 million in seed funding, Venturebeat reports.

While the Dutch platform is only on its seed round, it says it already has 100,000 users, including companies like NASA, CERN, Alibaba, SpaceX, O'Reilly, IBM and Expedia. This could be because it has a slightly different business model to US competitor GitHub that works especially well for big firms.

GitLab lets users keep an unlimited number of private code stores online at once, without a cap on how many programmers can access them, Silicon Angle reports. GitHub, on the other hand, only offers an unlimited number of public repositories for free, and has different paid tiers for private ones.

GitLab also lets companies download and run GitLab on their own servers for free under an open-source licence.

While offering this much for nothing might reduce the number of users paying for the premium version of GitLab's platform, the company says it was already profitable before it took part in Y Combinator's Winter 2015 programme.

Khosla Ventures, 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures, and Liquid 2 Ventures took part in the round. In a blog post, GitLab said it plans to use the funding to build its operations in the US, including opening a new office in San Francisco.

US competitor GitHub raised $200 million at a value of about $2 billion in June.