CloudBees raises $23.5 million

CloudBees, Inc. has announced a $23.5 million financing round, led by longtime CloudBees investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Existing investors Matrix Partners, Verizon Ventures and Blue Cloud Ventures also participated in the round.

The latest funding announcement follows earlier rounds of $4 million, $10.5 million and $10.8 million, bringing the total investment in CloudBees to just under $50 million since the company's inception in 2010. Previous venture investment rounds were led by Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Verizon Ventures with participation from Blue Cloud Ventures, JBoss alumni Bob Bickel and Marc Fleury, and Ed Bugnion, co-founder of VMware.

CloudBees plans to use the funding to facilitate the ongoing and significant growth the company is experiencing from demand for its continuous delivery (CD) solutions based on Jenkins CI, the leading open source continuous integration (CI) platform. With Jenkins' global dominance as the hub of continuous delivery for enterprises, CloudBees sees explosive demand in 2015 for its Jenkins-based solutions. The CloudBees solutions enable organizations to leverage Jenkins and CD practices at enterprise scale.

"This investment in CloudBees tops a year of continuous growth and acceleration, fueled by the adoption of continuous delivery as companies in all markets realize that software is eating the world," said Sacha Labourey, founder and chief executive officer of CloudBees. "We will use the additional capital to serve the growing demand for Jenkins-based solutions worldwide, to continue to capture market share and to further cement our position as the continuous delivery leader."

CloudBees plans to make investments in a variety of areas - including development, marketing, sales and professional services - to increase marketshare. The company also plans to introduce new products to serve an even broader range of customers - from smaller implementations to full-scale enterprise footprints - and to make new investments in strategic partnerships.

Growth in the enterprise uptake of Jenkins has been an important business driver for CloudBees and was a primary factor in its successful strategic shift in 2014 to focus solely on continuous delivery solutions powered by Jenkins. Global brands that subscribed to CloudBees' enterprise offerings in 2014 include Amadeus, 3M, TIAA-CREF, Intuit, Alcatel-Lucent, Discover Financial Services, EMC, Fidelity, Lufthansa, Fannie Mae, Amdocs, The Federal Reserve, Hyatt Hotels, Disney, PG&E, Northrup Grumman, USDA, Robert Bosch, EMC, Verizon, ABN AMRO, Nordstrom, Cisco and T-Mobile.

"We've been with CloudBees since the early days and we continue to be impressed with the way this world class team delivers on its market vision," said John Vrionis, general partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners. "The business is scaling quickly and we believe there is a massive opportunity to build a franchise company given all the momentum in continuous delivery."