Melbourne tech startup A Cloud Guru raises $46M

A fast-growing enterprise technology company specialising in online cloud computer training has completed one of the biggest funding rounds in Australia to date in 2019, with backing from domestic and US investors.

A Cloud Guru (ACG) has successfully closed a growth equity investment of USD$33 million (AUD$46.8 million), led by US-based equity firm Summit Partners, alongside Australia's AirTree Ventures and existing investor Elephant.

The Melbourne-based company has notched an 80 per cent increase in revenue over the past year, helping people all over the world to upskill for a rapidly-changing digital economy.

With its global content library of training courses, ACG has now helped more than 850,000 users in 186 countries gain skills and certifications for furthering their careers.

With the boost in funding, the group plans to accelerate hiring in Australia, expand its content library with specialised courses and labs taught by a growing roster of expert instructors, and build out features that help enterprises reskill their workforce and drive cloud adoption.

Founded in 2015 by two brothers from Perth, Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg, ACG is driven by a straightforward mission to 'teach the world to cloud'.

What began as a single cloud certification course has expanded into a rich content library and hands-on labs covering Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure cloud platforms. 

"We are humbled by this level of support from our investment partners," says Sam Kroonenburg, co-founder and CEO.

"We are eager to continue building our engineering, content, and go-to-market teams to support our customers and partners.

"We are now even better positioned to help more businesses and individuals learn to cloud."

AirTree Ventures partner James Cameron says as technology and automation disrupt nearly every industry, people are recognising the need to upgrade their skills and sometimes even change careers entirely.

"A Cloud Guru offers a way to do exactly that. It's already helped hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to reskill for the digital age - from call centre employees in Canberra to coal miners in Virginia," says Cameron.

"At the same time, it's helping Fortune 500 companies invest in their own talent and stay relevant in a world where cloud deployed software continues to dominate their industries. This is why ACG has become one of the fastest growing companies we've seen come out of Australia in many years."

In May 2018, A Cloud Guru launched ACG for Business, a learning management and talent development platform designed to help businesses reskill their workforce and accelerate cloud adoption.

ACG's Accelerator Program and Learning Paths enable enterprises to quickly onboard their teams to the cloud and provide professionals with a step-by-step path from beginner to expert across specific IT domains.

ACG for Business helps enterprises meet and exceed their cloud ROI goals and is the cloud training platform of choice for companies including Dow Jones, Capital One DevExchange, and Qualcomm.

All platform development and the majority of content development are done in Australia, out of the company's Melbourne office. A Cloud Guru also has offices in London and Austin, Texas.

"It's amazing to think how far we've come since those early days in 2015," says co-founder Ryan Kroonenburg.

"To all of the awesome Cloud Gurus who have supported us along the way, we want to say thank you. You are the reason we are where we are today. With this round of investment, we have additional resources to do even more in support of the A Cloud Guru community. Keep being awesome, Cloud Gurus."

Business News Australia