A Melbourne cloud computing startup just landed one of 2019's biggest raises to go global

Melbourne educational training startup A Cloud Guru (ACG) has raised US$33 million (A$47m) from US and local investors, including Summit Partners and Airtree Ventures, just four years after brothers Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg launched the platform.

As technological disruption cuts its way through a swathe of industry sectors, the Kroonenburgs has been working with a range of global corporates, including Dow Jones, Capital One DevExchange, and Qualcomm, to retrain workforces with a focus on cloud capabilities.

The solid backing of Summit, which has around US$19 billion invested globally, along with Sydney-based Airtree, suggests VC firms are looking closely at workplace education, especially as tech both enhances and disrupts, as a major growth sector

Existing ACG investor, New York-based VC firm Elephant, was also part of the latest equity investment.

The funds will go towards expanding the Australian team, scaling ACG’s online cloud training platform and expanding the content library with specialised courses covering Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

AirTree Ventures partner James Cameron said ACG has become one of the fastest growing Australian companies his firm has seen “in many years”.

ACG says it has seen 80% growth in revenue, in the past year. Having launched as a single cloud certification course, it’s now had more than 850,000 users in 186 countries developing their cloud skills and certification.

Cameron said A Cloud Guru offers a way for workers to upgrade their skills and sometimes even change careers entirely as automation and tech disruption hits.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

ACG co-founder and CEO Sam Kroonenburg said the business was now in an even better position to help more businesses and individuals learn to cloud.

“We eager to continue building our engineering, content, and go-to-market teams to support our customers and partners,” he said.

The business launched ACG for Business, a learning management and talent development platform for workforce reskilling 12 months ago, while ACG’s Accelerator Program and Learning Paths helps business adapt teams to the cloud quickly and provide professionals with a step-by-step path from beginner to expert across specific IT domains.

While the company has offices in London and Austin, Texas, all platform development and the majority of content development are done in the Melbourne office.

Simon Thomsen

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