Laravel Holdings Inc., the company behind the open-source Laravel PHP web application framework, announced today that it has raised $57 million in new funding from Accel Partners LP to support open-source development and its new cloud platform aimed at simplifying application deployment.
Founded in 2011, Laravel offers a PHP-based web application framework with elegant syntax and a robust toolkit for developers. It simplifies tasks such as routing, authentication and caching, helping developers build powerful web applications more efficiently.
Laravel’s ecosystem includes services such as Forge, Vapor and Horizon, which provide tools for server management, deployment and task management. The framework is developer-focused, continuously improving with new features and updates to enhance user experience.
While a commercial company raising money, at its core, Laravel is committed to open-source development, with its employees contributing significantly to the open-source community. Like other open-source companies, Laravel makes its money through additional services that are offered on top of the open-source code base, including management tools, software-as-a-service products and training and conferences.
One of those services, Laravel Cloud, was announced on Aug. 29 with early access available later this year. It will offer a fully managed platform designed to simplify web application deployment for Laravel developers.
Laravel Cloud is aimed at providing an affordable and streamlined deployment solution for developers, offering features such as free sandbox tiers and pay-per-use pricing for compute resources. One of its benefits includes the ability to hibernate applications that are not receiving traffic, reducing costs during downtime. Additionally, the service will offer built-in support for scaling and resource management, allowing developers to set limits to control app growth.
The company, which is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, comes into the funding round — the first time it has ever raised funding in its 13 years — with 35 employees and users that include Apple Inc., OpenAI, Block Inc., Zillow Group Inc., OpenTable Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc. and Pfizer Inc.
“We have this unique and somewhat peculiar strategy of looking for these difficult-to-find, bootstrapped companies that are profitable and tend to be located well outside of Silicon Valley,” Accel partner Miles Clement told Fortune. He added that Accel had been pursuing Laravel for more than a year before the deal finally came to fruition.