As it continues to transition from a technology-driven platform company into a sales-driven services company, Docker is raising more money to fuel that expansion.
Techcrunch noticed a filing with the SEC that shows Docker appears to have raised almost $92 million of a total funding round valued at just shy of $192 million, which would easily be the largest single round of funding in Docker’s history. A Docker representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment; Crunchbase has some good background on why it’s a little unclear.
In its early days Docker was one of the fastest-growing companies in enterprise computing, quickly changing the way companies built and deployed their applications by making container technology easier for developers to use. Containers allow developers to stuff all the dependencies their applications need to run into a single package that can be deployed across multiple servers or multiple public clouds, improving application reliability and flexibility.
The company’s momentum on the product front stalled a bit after Kubernetes emerged as the de facto standard for managing the large number of containers that big application development shops require. But under Steve Singh, who was named CEO in May 2017, Docker has repositioned itself as a guide for big enterprise companies that need help making the transition from apps running on virtual machines on their own servers to containers in the public cloud.
That amount of funding, at this stage in a startup’s history, suggests that Docker is planning a sales and marketing blitz around the world in anticipation of either a big sale or an IPO that would return the $334 million investors have plunged into the company over the years. Singh told reporters at DockerCon 2018 that the company is generating “triple-digit millions” in bookings — a notoriously vague measure of software performance — and that Docker hopes to be cash-flow positive by the middle of next year.
