Docker Is Raising Funding at $1.3B Valuation

Lizette Chapman and Eric Newcomer (Bloomberg) — Business software company Docker Inc. is raising fresh funds, valuing the company at $1.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.The latest influx of $75 million, which is expected to close by the end of the month, will help fuel Docker’s newest push to win business customers and finally monetize its free open-source tools popular with developers worldwide. Part of the funding will go toward building a sales and marketing team for corporate clients, one of the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private matters. The valuation would represent a marginal increase from the $1 billion it was ascribed when it last raised money in 2015.

The funding follows a springtime management shuffle. Steve Singh, a former chief executive officer of Concur Technologies Inc., took the top job at Docker in May, replacing co-founder Ben Golub. Executive Vice President of Product Marc Verstaen is also leaving the startup. He’s being replaced by another company co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Solomon Hykes.

See also: Why Docker is So Popular

Palo Alto, California-based Docker provides virtual work spaces, called containers, so software developers can more efficiently build, distribute and run software programs. The idea is to create software in isolated, independent environments which can then be stored in the cloud, distributed and run anywhere regardless of the operating system and hardware. Although Docker’s technology has won rave developer reviews — there are more than 3,000 community contributors and more than 270 meetup groups devoted to the technology worldwide — monetizing that popularity has proven tricky.

Docker declined to comment on the funding round and valuation.

The seven-year-old startup counts ADP LLC and General Electric Co. among its customers and competes against startups including Mesosphere Inc. and open source systems like Google’s Kubernetes.

Docker will appoint experts in operations and enterprise sales to its board in coming months and slowly phase out other members who represent investors, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions.