Pantheon Lands $40M In Rare Round For WebOps Industry

San Francisco’s Pantheon, which helps manage open-source content sites WordPress and Drupal, just raised $40 million in a Series D led by Sageview Capital, the company said. Previous investors from the Foundry Group, Scale Venture Partners, and Industry Ventures also participated in the round.

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The last time Pantheon raised cash was a Series C of $29 million in July 2016, according to Crunchbase data. The new round brings the company’s total funding up to $96.8 million.

The company, which runs more than 280,000 websites, works to boost functions like website performance and security while also rolling out marketing campaigns and ads. Its customers include companies like Yale, Coach, United Nations, Quicken Loans, and IBM.

Here’s why this new round is important: For its size the content management space lacks adequate venture funding, as our reporter Mary Ann Azevedo told us last March. WordPress CMS has grown to 33.3 percent of the Internet up from 13 percent in 2010, according to W3tech.

When talking to Crunchbase last Spring, Austin-based Silverton Partners General Partner Kip McClanahan said, “one out of four websites are powered by WordPress… that’s a pretty good field to play in.” Silverton had invested in WordPress Hosting startup, WP Engine.

Conversely startups that helped WordPress function better (not just Pantheon, but also companies like WP Engine) raised only $300,000 in funding in 2017, according to Crunchbase Data.

So the key takeaway? This infusion of capital to a company that supports systems like WordPress and Drupal is not only good, but rare news. Let’s see if other venture capitalists follow suit.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias