Acquia lands $50M to bet on Drupal, not WordPress

Acquia, a startup that helps big companies build and maintain their Drupal-based websites, just picked up a huge round of funding to scoop up new clients and add even more features to its services.

Today, the company announced in a blog post that it has closed a new round of funding totaling $50 million. Acquia said it will use the new funding for growth is sales and marketing efforts, as well as focus on its big data marketing, personalization, and commerce offerings.

“Digital isn’t just about marketing; it is the core of modern business, disrupting everything – commerce, campaigns, customer service, employee engagement, civic engagement and more. Acquia is powering this disruption for enterprise organizations, creating an enormous opportunity to accelerate our momentum,” said Acquia chief executive Tom Erickson.

“With this new funding, we’re helping our customers maximize their business impact with our open cloud platform for integrated digital experiences,” he said.

It should be noted that when Acquia raised its previous round of funding, in Nov. 2012, chief executive Tom Erickson said it would be its last before filing to go public, obviously not how plans have evolved.

As Drupal is an open source project, other companies such as Adobe, Jive, and Pantheon offer similar services to Acquia’s. Pantheon announced two weeks ago that it has raised $21.5 million in new funding and a goal of “powering 30 percent of the Internet.”

Acquia now counts organizations such as Mercedes-Benz, Warner Music, NBC Sports Digital, Intel, Puma, Lush, Timex, the Peach Corps, and Stanford University among its customers.

Acquia was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Burlington, Mass. New Enterprise Associates led this round, with Split Rock Partners and existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Investor Growth Capital, and Tenaya Capital also participating. This round brings Acquia’s total funding to $118.6 million.