Taylor tweeted this morning:
"I'm excited to announce that Laravel has raised a $57M Series A in partnership with Accel."
"I believe that Laravel is the most productive way to build full-stack web applications, and Laravel Cloud will be the platform for shipping those applications that this community deserves."
Partnering with Accel has allowed Laravel start building a world-class engineering and leadership team that has resulted in Laravel Cloud (demoed at Laracon) and also another product that will be announced at Laracon AU in November.
He also follows up with some important takeaways from the announcement.
First, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still leading Laravel as CEO, and I’m working closely with all of our teams to ensure we’re building the best products possible for our community.
Second, we remain committed to open source. Since partnering with Accel, we’ve hired additional engineering support dedicated to open source development. I also remain the primary curator of all features in the Laravel framework. Inertia 2.0 and our first-party VS Code extension are a direct result of our increased open source engineering capacity. Accel deeply understands open source and developer focused tooling, with previous investments in Sentry, Vercel, and Linear.
For more info on this, they've made a special announcement video with answers to some common questions:
Laravel Funding Q&A
Taylor and Aaron Francis also did a live Q&A after the announcement video and here are some of the questions and answers.
Where is the money going?
They are scaling up the team by hiring in many positions and building out the new Laravel Cloud. They are also putting paid employees on the open-source side to continue working, building, and making Laravel even better.
Did you take money because the company was struggling?
No, Laravel was profitable, and the framework was growing, but Taylor felt like he had built everything he could at the level it was run at. He decided not to rest and wanted to take a bigger swing at building the things he’d always wanted to.
Laravel Cloud?
Laravel Cloud was designed from the ground up with a very low barrier so anyone can deploy. The sandbox tier is free, and you pay for compute at 1c an hour and 4c for the database. If your app isn't getting traffic, it will hibernate, and you have no charges. They want this to be affordable so every app built on Laravel can use it.
Cloud is a serverful environment that gives you a traditional PHP experience but is fully managed behind the scenes.
Is Forge or Vapor going away?
They still have big plans for Forge and are not giving up. More details should come out early next year.
What about GDPR, SOC2, and other things?
All these are being looked into, and they will have them ready for Laravel Cloud.
Will Laravel Cloud have spending limits?
Yes, you can set spending limits and configure your application’s scale. So, you can set a limit on how viral you want your app to go before it fails.
Laravel Cloud API?
Yes, it will have an API.
Why was it announced today and not when it was originally closed?
They felt it was important to wait and announce once they had something to show for it. That way, they could show us the things they are building and working on and how they are helping grow the community.
When are the products announced at Laracon coming out?
- Inertia 2 will be next month
- VS Code extension will be free, open source, and launched hopefully in early November.
- Laravel Cloud the first of next year.
A new product coming to Laracon AU?
It's not fully announced, but it will be around the monitoring space, and you will not have to use Laravel Cloud for it.
Is Laravel going to keep the same release cycle?
Yes, it will remain a major release in Q1 each year, with new minor releases each week.
Does this change any other Laravel paid products?
This is not something they are immediately focused on, and not any changes planned in the near term.
With taking money, Accel now has a voice. What are their opinions, and is this going to change Laravel?
Accel and Taylor are aligned on the products they are building. Accel is there to help make the best products possible. They believe in Laravel and what it can become and are there to assist in reaching that goal.
What does this mean for PHP as an ecosystem?
It shows that PHP is mature and works, and Taylor’s mission is to show that you can be more productive than you might even know. Laravel and PHP already have large companies using the stack, and it's going to help them continue to grow.
Can Laravel buy PHP now?
No, but Laravel wants to help them grow through marketing and other initiatives. But a company can't buy PHP.
Laravel Herd for Linux?
This is not on the short-term list of things to do, but it's not out of the question.
Should the community be nervous about the funding?
Taylor said Laravel is his life’s work and his greatest professional accomplishment. He wants Laravel to succeed now more than ever and is committed to continuing to make it awesome.
This is a breaking story and we will update this as more information is out.
Eric is the creator of Laravel News and has been covering Laravel since 2012.
