The momentum behind the fast-rising cloud startup Docker continues to roll on, with the San Francisco-based company set to announce on Tuesday that it landed a $95 million Series D funding round led by Insight Venture Partners and new participants Coatue Management, Goldman Sachs, and Northern Trust. The funding round also included previous investors Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures, and AME Cloud Ventures.
With the new cash, which follows a $40 million series C round last September that reportedly valued the company at $400 million, Docker has now raised a total of $150 million in funding, said Docker CEO Ben Golub in an interview. Golub would not disclose the company’s current valuation, but a source familiar with the situation put the post-money mark at around $1 billion.
Docker, which was formerly known as DotCloud, made a name for itself over the past year for its specialization on container technology, which is a type of virtualization that supposedly makes for more efficient application development and data center operations.
The startup has been a hit with developers who use containers to craft the types of modern-day software applications that siphon resources and data from multiple servers that can span many different clouds. IT staff could also stand to benefit from container technology, which requires less processing power when compared with using older virtualization technology in a company’s infrastructure.
All in all, Docker’s technology could benefit businesses that are looking to speed up the time it takes to develop software applications and services while cutting down on the amount of resources it takes to keep their internal infrastructure running.
While Docker’s core technology is open source, meaning that developers anywhere can download the product and start using it without having to pay a dime, the startup has been working on a paid version called Docker Enterprise Hub that lets companies use Docker behind their company firewalls for added security.
Golub said the paid version of Docker is still in beta but 15 corporate customers have now signed up, including several Coins2Day 100 companies.
Creating a sustainable revenue model will be important for Docker as it tries to capitalize on its popularity. The startup is banking that its paid service version will eventually lead to profitability.
For now, Golub said the company is more concerned with working on new features to attract more developers to its open-source product with the thought being that once developers jump on board, IT staff and upper management will eventually be more inclined to try out the paid version once that product is fully fleshed out.
“Certainly for this year [investors] are more concerned with broad-based adoption than heavy monetization,” Golub said.
The company now has 150 employees. Its existing product has been used by a number of high-profile companies including Goldman Sachs, the BBC, Spotify, and Yelp.
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