Docker Raises $40M in Sequoia-Led Series C

Docker, the startup behind the eponymous open source app container technology, has raised $40 million in a Series C funding round. The round is double the size of the startup’s Series B, closed in January, and significantly increases its valuation.

In the round, the company, which has enjoyed support from some of high-tech world’s top startup financiers in the past, adds another heavyweight Silicon Valley VC to the list of backers. Sequoia Capital led the round, joined by Docker’s previous investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo.

Docker launched the first production-ready release of its software in June. Its technology packages Linux applications inside application “containers,” which make the applications portable across a variety of infrastructure environments, on premise or in the cloud.

Read a Data Center Knowledge Q&A with Docker CEO Ben Golub

The company sells an array of tools that help developers take an application through all the stages between development and deployment without worrying about infrastructure configuration requirements. The idea is to speed up the application development process by freeing developers from infrastructure concerns.

Docker has support from IT infrastructure software heavyweights, such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat and more recently VMware and claims to have been enjoying a lot of success in the enterprise IT market. The new funding will go toward expanding its enterprise business and growing its ecosystem.

David Messina, vice president of enterprise marketing at Docker, said one of the immediate goals was to grow the organization that provides support to enterprise customers. Docker currently provides a “typical support and training agreement traditional enterprise software companies would have,” he said, but wants to grow its support capabilities.

A number of customers are trying to scale Docker implementations from one team across the entire enterprise and are seeking guidance in doing so from the company, he explained.

There are currently about 60 people total on the company’s team. Some working out of its San Francisco headquarters and some working remotely elsewhere around the world.

Another short-term goal is to release a private version of Docker Hub, a catalog of Docker tools developers can choose from. The hub is public, but there is demand from enterprises for something similar they can put behind their own firewalls.

As part of the funding announcement, Docker said Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia, will join its board of directors. Coughran spent eight years as senior vice president of engineering at Google before joining the venture capital firm.

“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,” Coughran said in a prepared statement.