Acquia Funding Tops $173M as Drupal 8 Release Nears
While the open source Drupal content management system (CMS) is freely available, there is money to be made in support and services. This is where Acquia, the lead commercial vendor behind Drupal, comes into play.
Acquia today announced a new $55 million Series G equity financing round, with investors Centerview Capital Technology, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Split Rock Partners.
Founded in 2008, Acquia raised $7 million in its first round of funding. The company has since raised increasingly large sums with each new round. Its E round in 2012 raised $30 million and a Series F round in 2014 raised $50 million.
The new funding is intended to help Acquia scale out its operations globally, including sales and marketing efforts.
“What Acquia does is not at all easy — or cheap — but we've made good strides toward that vision,” Drupal founder Dries Buytaert blogged. “We have become the backbone for many of the world's most influential digital experiences and continue to grow fast.”
Drupal 8
As to why Acquia needs funding to scale out its operations now, a lot of it has to do with capitalizing on the opportunity that the upcoming Drupal 8 release will likely enable. Drupal 8, the next generation of Drupal, has been in development for the past five years.
At the time of Acquia's Series E round, the plan was for Drupal 8 to be released in the summer of 2013. That release date has been delayed and pushed out time and again, as different issues and technology challenges popped up. However, the finish line is now in sight for Drupal 8. In July Acquia announced that it is providing commercial support ahead of general availability, which is now expected before the end of 2015.
“Many spent evenings and weekends pushing to get Drupal 8 across the finish line,” Buytaert wrote. “No one individual or group is to blame for the delay — except maybe me as the project lead for not having learned fast enough from previous release cycles.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
Sean Michael is a writer who focuses on innovation and how science and technology intersect with industry, technology Wordpress, VMware Salesforce, And Application tech. TechCrunch Europas shortlisted her for the best tech journalist award. She enjoys finding stories that open people's eyes. She graduated from the University of California.
