Continuum Analytics, a company that provides distributions of the Python programming language, announced today that it has raised $24 million in funding.

Teachers, students, and commercial programmers know Continuum as the company behind the Anaconda free open-source distribution of Python. But Continuum also has versions of Python that big companies can pay for. Continuum provides commercial support, too.

Python was originally developed in the 1990s by Guido van Rossum. Earlier this year it was ranked as the sixth most popular language in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey. It has become popular for statistical work among data scientists, alongside the R programming language.

In January Microsoft said it had acquired a prominent R distribution vendor, Revolution Analytics. That deal has put R and Python distribution vendors in a more positive light. Other Python distribution vendors include Enthought.

Continuum Analytics started in 2011 and is based in Austin, Texas. To date the company has raised $34 million.

BuildGroup and General Catalyst Partners led the new round in Continuum Analytics. Previously the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gave the company $3 million in research funding.