A Cloud Guru (ACG), one of Australia’s fastest growing enterprise technology companies, announced at the end of April that it had closed a growth equity investment of USD$33 million (AUD$46.8 million), led by US-based growth equity firm Summit Partners, alongside Australia’s AirTree Ventures and existing investor Elephant.
ACG, a clear leader in online cloud computing training and talent development around the world, will use the funding 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.
To pursue its mission, ACG has gathered a strong team of product, engineering, and content development talent based in Melbourne.
ACG has become one of Australia’s fastest growing enterprise technology companies, with 80 per cent increase in revenue over the past 12 months. It has now helped more than 850,000 users across 186 countries acquire the skills and certifications needed to pursue meaningful careers in the cloud.
The state-of-the-art learning platform helps businesses and individuals rapidly develop cloud skills, prepare for certification exams, and progress through learning paths to become gurus in specialised disciplines.
What does this mean for the startup?
“We are humbled by this level of support from our investment partners,” said Sam Kroonenburg, co-founder and CEO of A Cloud Guru.
“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.”
“As technology and automation disrupt nearly every industry, Australians and people all over the world are recognizing the need to upgrade their skills and sometimes even change careers entirely,” said James Cameron, Partner at AirTree Ventures.
“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.
“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.”
What has the company been up to in the run-up to this funding round?
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,” said 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.”
What exactly does the startup do?
A Cloud Guru is the premier learning and talent development platform for cloud computing, delivering world-class courses by engineers, for engineers.
Its state-of-the-art platform provides both businesses and individuals with the ability to stay current, stay relevant, and deliver results with cloud computing. To date, more than 850,000 students across 186 countries have taken our courses, labs, and quizzes.
