Pivotal, the platform as a service company spun out from VMware and EMC three years ago, today announced plans to close a series C financing round worth $253 million led by Ford, Microsoft and its existing investors GE and its two parent companies.
Pivotal is one of the leading vendors behind the Cloud Foundry PaaS, the commercialized version of the open source project. Cloud Foundry provides an environment for developers to build applications; it provisions the infrastructure needed to run and scale them.
Perhaps most interesting about the announcement are the new investors: Ford and Microsoft. Ford follows GE as an investor in the company, indicating its heavy use of CF and its desire to ensure the company’s future viability and success. Ford last week launched FordPass, a consumer platform that the company says was built with Pivotal.
Executive Vice President of Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Scott Guthrie said in a statement that investing in Pivotal is about ensuring that Microsoft Azure is equipped to run Java apps using Cloud Foundry. “Today’s announcement is a reflection of this commitment, along with our continued emphasis on choice and flexibility across our cloud platform,” Gurthie said.
Pivotal’s first quarter revenue rose 56% year over year to $83 million. The company says that seven of the top 10 U.S. banks, three of the top five global auto manufacturers and five of the top 10 telecommunications companies use Pivotal in some fashion. It has 2,000 employees in 17 offices around the world. It’s first two rounds of funding totaled $358 million and this round is expected to close this month.