An Overview of Container Startups and Funding

How many container startups are there? What are their products? How much funding have they secured so far? These are all pertinent questions as container platforms such as Docker continue to take off. Here are answers.

We’ve put together a list of the most active startups in the container space. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all companies dealing with containers, nor does it include established companies that are working with containers (we’ll cover those separately). But it’s a good place to start if you want to get a handle on the container ecosystem.

Here are startup companies that have made significant bets on containers:

  • Portworx. Offers a product to simplify container deployment using software-defined infrastructure. It has received $8.5 million in funding so far.
  • Hedvig. Focuses on software-defined storage. Does more than just containers, but storage for Docker containers is an increasingly important part of the company’s operations. Funding totals $30.5 million.
  • Sysdig. One of the only companies offering container monitoring. Funding: $28 million.
  • Aviatrix. Main offering is a platform for building hybrid clouds. Now offers networking solutions for containers as well. Funding totals $10 million.
  • Codefresh. Develops a Docker deployment platform. Received seed funding in 2014; amount not disclosed.
  • Datadog. A monitoring provider. Not focused solely on containers, but now offering a monitoring solution for Docker environments. Funding: $147.9 million.
  • Virtuozzo. A spinoff of Parallels, the virtualization company. Now offering storage and other services for Docker containers. No funding deals announced to date.
  • Weaveworks. Provides a container management platform. Funding has reached $20 million so far.
  • ClusterHQ. Provides container management and data storage solutions. Total funding: $18 million.

Again, this is not an exhaustive list. But it provides a sense of where money is going within the container ecosystem.

Observant readers will notice that there are a fair number of container storage companies on the list. Docker management is well covered, too.

Container networking has been the subject of less investment to date. In addition, visualization tools for container—which will be vital as containers evolve from something only programmers use to enterprise-ready infrastructure solutions—have not yet seen much attention at all.

Christopher Tozzi

Christopher Tozzi has covered technology and business news for nearly a decade, specializing in open source, containers, big data, networking and security. He is currently Senior Editor and DevOps Analyst with Fixate.io and Sweetcode.io.

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