Docker, Inc. is an American technology company that develops productivity tools built around Docker, which automates the deployment of code inside

software container OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, called ''containers'' ( LXC, Solaris containers, Docker, Podman), ''zones'' (Solaris containers), '' ...

s. Major products of the company are Docker Hub, a central repository of containers, and Docker Desktop, a

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

application for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Mac to manage containers.

History

The company was founded as dotCloud in 2008 by Kamel Founadi, Solomon Hykes, and Sebastien Pahl in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, and incorporated in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 2010. In July, 2013, Benjamin Golub (formerly of

Plaxo Plaxo was an online address book that launched in 2002. It was a subsidiary of cable television company Comcast from 2008 to 2017. At one point it offered a social networking service. History The company was founded by Sean Parker and two Stanfo ...

and

Gluster Gluster Inc. (formerly known as Z RESEARCH) was a software company that provided an open source platform for scale-out public and private cloud storage. The company was privately funded and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with an engin ...

) became chief executive. On September 19, 2013, dotCloud and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

announced an alliance to integrate Docker with

OpenShift OpenShift is a family of containerization software products developed by Red Hat. Its flagship product is the OpenShift Container Platform — a hybrid cloud platform as a service built around Linux containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernet ...

Red Hat’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering. On October 29, 2013, dotCloud was renamed Docker. On July 23, 2014, Docker acquired two-person startup Orchard. On August 4, 2014 the dotCloud technology and brand was sold to cloudControl. Four person company Koality was acquired on October 7, 2014. On October 15, 2014

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

announced a partnership, and its services were announced for the

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

(EC2) on November 13, 2014. Docker was estimated to be valued at over $1 billion, making it what is called a " unicorn company", after a $95 million fundraising round in April 2015. In April 2016, it was revealed that the

C.I.A. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

's investment arm

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with ...

was a large investor in Docker. In May 2019, Rob Bearden became CEO. In November 2019,

Mirantis Mirantis Inc. is a Campbell, California, based B2B open source cloud computing software and services company. Its primary container and cloud management products, part of the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform suite of products, are Mirantis Contain ...

, a cloud computing company, acquired Docker's enterprise business, including Docker Engine. and Scott Johnston became CEO. On August 31, 2021 Docker released Docker Business subscription for large companies, and changed the licensing terms for Docker Desktop users.

Venture rounds

* February 28, 2011 - $800K

seed capital Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

from

Chris Sacca Christopher Sacca (born May 12, 1975) is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage te ...

Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...

Ron Conway Ronald Crawford Conway (born March 9, 1951) is an American venture capitalist and philanthropist. He has been described as one of Silicon Valley's "super angels". Early career Conway graduated from San Jose State University with a bachelor's de ...

and others. * March 22, 2011 - $10 million

Series A A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

- Led by

Benchmark Capital Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups. History The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company. In 2011, it invested $12 mill ...

and Trinity Ventures. * January 21, 2014 - $15 million

Series B A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

- Led by

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as wel ...

. * September 16, 2014 - $40 million Series C - Led by

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

. * April 14, 2015 - $95 million Series D - Led by

Insight Venture Partners Insight Partners (previously Insight Venture Partners) is an American venture capital and private equity firm based in New York City. The firm invests in growth-stage technology, software and Internet businesses. History Insight Partners was fo ...

. * November 2015 - $18 million Series D. * November 13, 2019 - $35 million Series A. * March 16, 2021 - $23 million Series B- Led by Tribe Capital. * March 31, 2022 - $105 million Series C - Led by

Bain Capital Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry se ...

Acquisitions

* July 23, 2014 - Orchard * February 26, 2015 - SocketPlane * January 21, 2016 - Unikernel Systems * April 11, 2022 - Infosiftr * May 10, 2022 - Nestybox * May 24, 2022 - Tilt * June 21, 2022 - Atomist

References

{{Reflist, 2 Free software companies Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Software companies established in 2013 Software companies of the United States 2013 establishments in the United States 2013 establishments in California Companies established in 2013