Partnership with 26 venture capital firms will
provide support to startups building on Cloudflare Workers
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the security, performance, and
reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today
announced a new funding program for startups in partnership with
leading venture capital investors. The Workers Launchpad Funding
Program will provide up to $1.25 billion of financing to startups
building applications on Cloudflare Workers, a highly-scalable
serverless computing platform that allows developers to build or
augment apps without configuring or maintaining infrastructure.
Cloudflare is partnering with 26 leading venture capital firms
including: Altimeter Capital, Altos Ventures, Amplify Partners,
Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, boldstart
ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Decibel, Emergence Capital, FirstMark,
Greylock Partners, IVP, Lightspeed, Meritech, New Enterprise
Associates (NEA), Norwest Venture Partners, Pear, Root Ventures,
Scale Venture Partners, Signal Peak, Silverton Partners, StepStone
Group, Threshold Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock, and
Vertex Ventures US to support developers using Cloudflare Workers
to build their applications. Any private company globally that is
building on Cloudflare Workers is eligible to apply for the
program. If selected by the participating venture capital firms,
companies may receive a cash investment from these participating
firms, as well as mentorship and support from Cloudflare.
“If there’s one thing venture capitalists look for in the
companies they fund, it’s the potential to achieve significant
scale. Startups that build on Cloudflare Workers are building on a
platform made to automatically support serious scale,” said Matthew
Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “While we can provide the
technology, we’re thrilled to partner with some of the leading
venture capital firms on the Workers Launchpad Funding Program, who
will potentially invest more than a billion dollars in funding
towards great startups built on Cloudflare Workers as they
scale.”
Today, hundreds of thousands of developers around the world rely
on Cloudflare Workers to build and deploy applications without
configuring or maintaining costly infrastructure. With Cloudflare’s
network spanning more than 275 cities in over 100 countries around
the world, developers can deploy code close to their users,
bringing the speed, performance, and scale of Cloudflare to their
customers. Since 2017, more than 500,000 developers have built on
Cloudflare’s developer platform and launched more than three
million applications.
Startups applying for the program will be eligible for potential
investment from investors, the Cloudflare Startup Enterprise Plan,
which includes Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare for Teams, Cloudflare
Stream, and additional core security and performance offerings, as
well as exclusive events.
Companies see success building with Workers
In 2021 Cloudflare acquired Zaraz, representing its first
acquisition of a company built on its own technology, Cloudflare
Workers. “When we began building Zaraz, we chose to rely on
Cloudflare Workers because we understood how critical a decision it
was to find the right platform that could help us launch faster and
also scale with our business,” said Yair Dovrat, product manager
for Zaraz at Cloudflare and former CEO and co-founder of Zaraz. “We
were blown away by the developer experience, performance, and
security that Workers offered and ultimately joined the Cloudflare
team to help push the standard for a better Internet more
holistically.”
"Our use of Workers has greatly expanded, and it's now become a
critical part of our software. Workers performs a lot of key
functions for our app, and we're looking into more potential uses
right now,” said Sergey Tselovalnikov, API Platform Lead at
Canva.
Comments from Partners
- Amplify Partners: “Edge computing is the next major
paradigm shift for developers, and we believe that Workers is at
the forefront of this shift. We look forward to seeing Workers
enable a new class of edge-native companies, and we're excited to
invest in these companies,” said Renee Shah, Partner at Amplify
Partners.
- Bain Capital Ventures: “Discovering and developing the
next great leaders is Bain Capital Ventures’ number one goal.
Cloudflare has created a platform that simplifies the development
experience while maintaining cost-effectiveness to help empower
startups and entrepreneurs, both big and small. It's a natural fit
for the next generation of founders,” said Enrique Salem, Partner
at Bain Capital Ventures.
- boldstart ventures: “Over the past year, we have been
seeing a rapidly increasing amount of startups building their
products upon Cloudflare Workers. In fact, we have invested in
Liveblocks, which uses Workers and Durable Objects under the hood
to help deliver a great end user experience to developers (their
users). We are excited to continue supporting the growing Workers
ecosystem and the innovative products that will be built on top in
the future,” said Shomik Ghosh, Partner at boldstart ventures.
- Cowboy Ventures: “Cloudflare is redefining how
developers build on the edge and think about scale. We're excited
to help unearth that potential for scale and support companies
built on the Workers platform,” said Amanda Robson, Partner at
Cowboy Ventures.
- Decibel: “We see massive potential for the innovation
that will arise when entrepreneurs are able to focus on ideas
rather than infrastructure thanks to Cloudflare’s technologies,"
said Jon Sakoda, Founding Partner at Decibel.
- Greylock: “Cloudflare’s Workers ecosystem holds
incredible potential for the next generation of apps. Creating the
apps of tomorrow in a serverless environment is going to change the
way users access and interact with technology, and we’re excited to
support the entrepreneurs taking advantage of it,” said Jerry Chen,
General Partner at Greylock.
- Lightspeed: “The Cloudflare Workers’ platform represents
a step change in how developers can build for the cloud and the
edge. As long-time investors in the enterprise ecosystem,
Lightspeed is excited to support a new generation of developers
innovating on top of Cloudflare Workers’ performance, reliability,
and scale,” said Arif Janmohamed, Partner at Lightspeed.
- Meritech: “Working with companies like Datadog and
Snowflake, we know the value of strong infrastructure and the
challenges that Cloudflare Workers can help solve when it comes to
deploying at the edge,” said Alex Clayton, General Partner at
Meritech.
- New Enterprise Associates: “We’re proud to have
partnered with Cloudflare early on, and continue to be impressed
with the company’s growth and impactful initiatives at this stage
of their journey. Cloudflare Workers is set to attract the same
caliber of founders who are building with a long-term vision for
both infrastructure and the end-user,” said Scott Sandell, Managing
General Partner at NEA and Member of the Board of Directors at
Cloudflare.
- Norwest Venture Partners: “Serverless is the future of
software development. A new era of innovation is being ushered in
by Cloudflare Workers that enables developers to spend more time
building and less time worrying about maintaining infrastructure,”
said Rama Sekhar, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners.
- Root Ventures: “The founders we work with are all
solving hard technical problems. So I think incidentally, we've
found them gravitating toward technologies like Rust, WASM, and
Cloudflare Workers, that maximize performance and productivity,”
said Lee Edwards, Partner at Root Ventures.
- Scale Venture Partners: “AWS EC2 changed everything when
it launched 16 years ago. I see Workers, and the broader Cloudflare
portfolio, in a similar place today. Serverless is the way to build
apps in 2022,” said Eric Anderson, Partner at Scale Venture
Partners.
- StepStone Group: “In a world where every team, company,
and product needs to be global in nature from the start,
Cloudflare’s platform is creating a new standard for scale and
availability, and we’re excited to see more businesses built on
it,” said John Avirett, Partner at StepStone Group.
- Threshold Ventures: “Threshold supports entrepreneurs
with bold visions taking on big markets. Cloudflare Workers is a
powerful tool that can help them build products that scale to serve
those markets globally. We’re excited to partner in the Cloudflare
Workers Fund and look forward to seeing what teams using this
technology build,” said Emily Melton, Managing Partner and
Co-Founder at Threshold Ventures.
- U.S. Venture Partners: “Cloudflare has a strong
following in the developer community, and we have no doubt that
their Workers platform will continue to attract the best and
brightest entrepreneurs to build tomorrow’s most popular apps,”
said Dafina Toncheva, General Partner at U.S. Venture
Partners.
- Venrock: “We’re proud to have been investors in great
companies like Cloudflare at the very beginning. We look for
companies that can scale and Cloudflare Workers provides a powerful
platform to allow startups with great ideas to meet any level of
customer demand,” said Bryan Roberts, Partner at Venrock.
- Vertex Ventures US: “Workers is core infrastructure for
the modern developer, and we are thrilled to see more startups
innovating with Cloudflare technologies,” said Chase Roberts,
Principal at Vertex Ventures US.
To learn more about the Cloudflare Workers Fund, please check
out the resources below:
- To apply, visit the Workers Launchpad Funding Program page
- Blog: Announcing the Workers Launchpad Funding Program
- Blog: The Cloudflare Startup Plan, v2.0
- Learn more about Cloudflare Workers
- Get started with Cloudflare Workers
Cloudflare is not providing any funding or making any funding
decisions, and there is no guarantee that any particular company
will receive funding through the program. All funding decisions
will be made by the venture capital firms that participate in the
program. Cloudflare is not a registered broker-dealer, investment
adviser, or other similar intermediary.
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. (www.cloudflare.com / @cloudflare) is on a
mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of
products protect and accelerate any Internet application online
without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of
code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web
traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets
smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant
improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other
attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top
Company Cultures 2018 list and ranked among the World’s Most
Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2019.
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Cloudflare, Inc. Daniella Vallurupalli Vice President, Head of
Global Communications press@cloudflare.com
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