Docker, Inc., the company behind the Docker open source platform, today announced that it has partnered with Sequoia and raised $40 million in series C funding. Coming on the heels of a successful series B in January, this round represents a nearly 3X increase in round size and an even greater increase in valuation, reflecting the explosive growth of the Docker platform and ecosystem, and the broad interest in Docker as a solution for delivering distributed applications. Existing investors Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Jerry Yang also participated. Docker will use the funds to drive adoption of its platform in the enterprise and to broaden its rapidly growing ecosystem of application developers, system administrators, platform providers, and technology partners.

Launched in March 2013, Docker is an open platform for building, shipping and running distributed applications. Docker provides a platform that enables any application to be created and run as a collection of consistent, low-overhead Docker containers that work across virtually any infrastructure. This new model liberates developers from application and infrastructure dependencies, significantly accelerates the software development lifecycle, and enables substantial improvements in infrastructure cost and efficiency.

Dockerized applications empower continuous business innovation shaped by software and that potential has fueled rapid adoption by web-scale companies such as Baidu, Cambridge Healthcare, eBay, Gilt, Groupon, Spotify and Yandex. These companies are reporting acceleration in development/build/test cycles from weeks to minutes, and increases in data center efficiency by 10X or more. This has spurred interest from more traditional enterprises such as financial institutions and government agencies, which are looking for similar tangible benefits delivered with enterprise-grade solutions and support from Docker.

'At Gilt, we are moving all of our software to run on Docker's platform. Gilt runs on a very modern micro services architecture,' said Michael Bryzek, Gilt Groupe, CTO and founder. 'Docker helps us keep services isolated and simplifies our continuous delivery pipeline that in turn encourages innovation and experimentation across all of our teams.'

'Docker's platform has become an important part of how we build and deploy new services at New Relic,' said Nic Benders, director of site engineering, New Relic. 'For example, when we launched the New Relic Insights product, Docker gave our development team more independence and let them focus on bringing a great piece of software live on an aggressive schedule. Docker has helped us deliver new services faster than ever before.'

Customer successes like Gilt and New Relic that were showcased at DockerCon in June - coupled with the release of Docker 1.0 and the Docker Hub collection of management tools - have triggered exponential usage growth. There have now been 21 million downloads of the Docker platform, up from 3 million at DockerCon. Over 35,000 'Dockerized' applications are now available on the Docker Hub Registry, and more than 13,000 Docker-related projects have launched on GitHub. Docker has also seen rapid growth in the technology partner ecosystem with over 100 companies - including industry heavyweights Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware - having announced Docker-supporting platform initiatives.

Industry veteran Bill Coughran, who joined Sequoia after eight years as a senior vice president of engineering at Google, will represent Sequoia on the Docker board. In addition to his vast industry experience, Coughran brings a deep understanding of the technical underpinnings of Docker and containers, which are emerging as critical components of web-scale infrastructure systems.

'Big businesses are being built by making accessible to all the transformative technologies championed by web-scale companies, and Docker is one of the most promising leaders of this movement,' said Coughran. 'The velocity at which the Docker team has innovated on product and grown its community is staggering - in 18 months they've accomplished what many leading companies take years to build.'

'We are thrilled to have a firm like Sequoia - and an individual like Bill Coughran - join our team,' said Ben Golub, CEO of Docker. 'This new partnership provides Docker with an unrivaled venture team and the resources to drive our vision for distributed applications. It's a testament to the community and ecosystem that have helped Docker reach this important milestone.'

Additional Quotes

'The addition of Sequoia Capital to an investor base that already includes Benchmark and Greylock gives Docker an all-star team. These firms have helped shape a disproportionate number of the truly market defining companies of this decade. Having one - let alone all three - of these firms as backers is a huge validation of Docker's prospect. And, as an entrepreneur-CEO, I can tell you how important such high-quality backing will be in Docker's quest to redefine the application development and infrastructure landscape.' - Jerry Yang, founding-partner at AME Cloud Ventures and Docker board member

'Solomon and the team at Docker stand out in our world as entrepreneurial heroes - they had the courage to ditch the plan we invested in, following their hearts to create Docker. The results stand out in my 15+ years of venture investing as the fastest growing movement in software; modern software developers and operators deeply want and need the innovation enabled by containers.' - Peter Fenton, general partner at Benchmark

'Docker has emerged as the de facto standard of how you will build, deploy, and orchestrate applications for the cloud. Its impact on the industry will be huge. Ben, Solomon and the rest of the Docker team are incredibly focused on building an enduring technology company, and I am so proud of all they have accomplished in such a short period of time.' - Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock Partners and Docker board member

'Docker is the definitive open platform to build, ship and run distributed applications. It has been a wild ride to get where we are today; one that continues as we usher in a new era of application portability and revolutionize distributed applications. I am exceptionally proud of all this team has accomplished, and thrilled to be a part of a company that empowers the developer community to such a degree.' -Dan Scholnick, general partner at Trinity Ventures and Docker board member

Additional Information

Ben Golub's Blog Post
Docker Case Studies
Follow Docker on Twitter
Take the Docker interactive tutorial
Join Docker on IRC
Join Docker on Google
Go to the Docker repository on GitHub
About Docker, Inc.

Docker, Inc. is the company behind the Docker open source platform, and is the chief sponsor of the Docker ecosystem. Docker is an open platform for developers and system administrators to build, ship, and run distributed applications. With Docker, IT organizations shrink application delivery from months to minutes, frictionlessly move workloads between data centers and the cloud, and improve infrastructure efficiency by 50 percent or more. Inspired by an active community and by transparent, open source innovation, Docker has been downloaded 21+ million times and is used by thousands of the world's most innovative organizations, including eBay, Baidu, Yelp, Spotify, Yandex, and Cambridge HealthCare. Docker's rapid adoption has catalyzed an active ecosystem, resulting in more than 35,000 'Dockerized' applications and integration partnerships with AWS, Cloud Foundry, Google, IBM, Microsoft, OpenStack, Rackspace, Red Hat and VMware.

Docker, Inc. is venture backed by AME Cloud Ventures (Yahoo! Founder Jerry Yang), Benchmark (Peter Fenton), Greylock Partners (Jerry Chen), Insight Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital (Bill Coughran), SV Angel (Ron Conway), Trinity Ventures (Dan Scholnick), and Y Combinator.