Archive for July, 2008

Investment from New Enterprise Associates, Amazon.com, and Benchmark Capital to help Company cement position as leading Ruby and Rails in the cloud provider

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (July 14, 2008) – Engine Yard, provider of the leading Ruby and Rails deployment platform, today announced it has closed a Series B financing round of $15 million led by New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), with participation from Amazon.com and current investor Benchmark Capital. Peter Sonsini, Partner at NEA, joins Engine Yard’s board of directors.

“Engine Yard’s exceptional track record and substantial mindshare within the open-source community position the company to be at the forefront of two key emerging markets in the computing space: Ruby and Rails and cloud computing,” said Mr. Sonsini. “I look forward to working with the Engine Yard team to build the business and take the company to the next growth stage.”

The new funding will help Engine Yard accelerate its business, bolster R&D of their forthcoming cloud computing cluster platform, and continue to drive innovation with its Ruby open-source projects, Rubinius and Merb.

“Ruby and Rails are gaining traction in the enterprise, as companies look for alternatives to Java and .NET that would free up resources, speed up development, and get them to market faster,” said Lance Walley, Engine Yard co-founder and CEO. “Engine Yard is committed to delivering the deployment infrastructure, services, and in-house expertise to take Ruby and Rails applications to the cloud. We’re pleased that NEA and Amazon.com share our vision and, through their investment, have committed to helping Engine Yard execute on this vision.”

Engine Yard offers a unique combination of technology, services, and technical leadership that is helping fuel the growing Ruby and Rails market. The Company’s deployment platform combines high-end clustering resources to run Ruby and Rails applications securely in the cloud, while Engine Yard’s team of Ruby and Rails technical experts delivers 24×7 maintenance and support. These same technical experts lead and participate in the open-source projects helping drive the future of Ruby and Rails.

“Amazon Web Services has provided infrastructure services in the cloud for over two years and we believe that cloud computing will be a large industry with companies providing a range of different services,” said Jeff Blackburn, Amazon.com Senior Vice President for Business Development. “Engine Yard is passionate about providing their customers with scalable and reliable cloud-based infrastructure for their Ruby on Rails applications.”

About NEA

New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a leading venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs create and build major new enterprises that use technology to improve the way we live, work and play. Since its founding in 1978, the firm has followed the same core principles: supporting its entrepreneurs, providing an excellent return to its limited partners, and practicing its profession with the highest standards and respect. Through its affiliated funds, NEA focuses on investments at all stages of a company’s development, from seed stage through IPO. With approximately $8.5 billion in committed capital, NEA’s experienced management team has invested in over 550 companies, of which more than 160 have gone public and more than 240 have been acquired. NEA has U.S. offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland; Menlo Park, California; and Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. has an office in Bangalore, India and New Enterprise Associates (Beijing) Ltd. has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China.

About Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital, a leading venture capital firm, was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build successful technology companies. Benchmark’s general partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm’s portfolio companies. Benchmark’s portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Infinera, MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. The firm manages nearly $2.8 billion in committed venture capital.

Amazon Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and subsequent filings.