Pantheon Systems, Inc.[3] is a privately held San Francisco-based corporation founded in 2010 by Zack Rosen, David Strauss, Josh Koenig, Matt Cheney. The company's flagship service, Pantheon, is a WebOps platform[4] for websites powered by open-source Drupal and WordPress CMS, as well as NextJS and GatsbyJS Jamstack front-ends. It is an app-specific PaaS provider, sold on a monthly subscription basis, with several support tiers available.

Pantheon Systems, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryComputer software
Founded2010; 14 years ago (2010)[1]
Founders
  • Zack Rosen
  • David Strauss
  • Josh Koenig
  • Matt Cheney
Headquarters,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Bill Ingram (Interim CEO)
Bill Ingram (Interim CFO)
David Strauss (CTO)
ProductsPantheon Platform
Number of employees
378+ (June 2021)
Websitepantheon.io

Technologically, Pantheon applications run as software-as-a-service instead of running on users' own servers. Pantheon's service is built on top of Google Cloud Platform.[5][6]

Capitalisation

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Founded in 2010, Pantheon Systems, Inc. raised a $1.3 million seed round to start.[7] They subsequently raised $5 million Series A financing from Foundry Group, with previous investors being Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, Floodgate, and Founders Collective bringing the total amount to $6.3 million.[8]

In 2014, Pantheon raised $21.5 million in Series B financing led by Scale Venture Partners (ScaleVP) with participation from OpenView Partners and existing investors Foundry Group and First Round Capital. As part of the funding round, Rory O'Driscoll, Partner at ScaleVP joined the board of directors.[9]

In 2016, Pantheon announced that it has raised a $29 million Series C round. Investors in this round include previous investors Foundry Group, OpenView Investment Partners, and Scale Venture Partners, as well as new investor Industry Ventures, which put $8.5 million into this round. The new round follows Pantheon’s $21.5 million Series B round in 2014 and brings the company’s total funding to $57 million.[10]

In 2019, Sageview Capital led a Series D funding round of $40 million, bringing total funding to over $100 million.[11]

On July 13, 2021, WebOps platform Pantheon raises $100M from SoftBank Vision Fund. The $100 million Series E funding is at a valuation of over $1 billion.[12] [13]

Features

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Pantheon is a combination of web development tools in the cloud and web hosting and management services. It is based in the cloud, and is free until deployment.[7][14] Developers have a choice between Drupal and WordPress and installation of profiles like Open Atrium, or custom upstreams with user-specified configuration. Data can be imported onto Pantheon automatically from existing Drupal-based websites.[15] Its container-based architecture allows for multiple development environments of a single website.[16][17]

Hosting of hate group websites

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In April 2023, Pantheon was criticized by open source developers for hosting the websites of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).[18] Both organizations have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the ADF's anti-LGBT stance[19] and FAIR having "ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists".[20][18] Koenig confirmed in a statement that Pantheon would continue to host the organizations' websites.[18]

In an October 2023 open letter, Koenig said, "we are marking new boundaries with a Prohibited Customers policy. We are setting standards that will, for instance, help us avoid taking on Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups as customers."[21]

References

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  1. ^ "Company". pantheon.io. Archived from the original on 26 April 2016. Retrieved 2016-06-24.
  2. ^ "Contact Us". pantheon.io. Archived from the original on 26 April 2016. Retrieved 2016-06-24.
  3. ^ "Company Overview of Pantheon Systems, Inc". bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. 5 July 2016. Archived from the original on 6 August 2016. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
  4. ^ "Pantheon Goes Global with Full Access WebOps". Yahoo! Finance. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
  5. ^ Josh Koenig (23 Jan 2018). "Pantheon Moves to Google Cloud Platform". pantheon.io. Archived from the original on 3 August 2018. Retrieved 3 Aug 2018.
  6. ^ "Pantheon: Evolving operations for mission critical websites". cloud.google.com. Archived from the original on 16 April 2019. Retrieved 3 Aug 2018.
  7. ^ a b "Backed With $1.3 Million, Pantheon Launches Drupal-Based Web Development Platform". TechCrunch. 2011-09-30. Archived from the original on 2013-08-25. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  8. ^ "Pantheon nabs $5M from Foundry, others for smarter Drupal site development". VentureBeat. 26 June 2012. Archived from the original on 2013-09-06. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  9. ^ "Pantheon Raises $21.5 Million to Expand its Website Platform for Drupal and WordPress Professionals" (Press release). BusinessWire. 15 May 2014. Archived from the original on 2016-11-19. Retrieved 2016-11-18.
  10. ^ "Pantheon Raises $29M for its WordPress and Drupal hosting and management platform". TechCrunch. 20 July 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-11-19. Retrieved 2016-11-18.
  11. ^ "Pantheon Announces $40 Million in Growth Funding to Bring WebOps To Every Digital Marketing Team". Global News Wire (Press release). 5 March 2019. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
  12. ^ "WebOps platform Pantheon raises $100M from SoftBank Vision Fund". techcrunch.com. 2021-07-14. Archived from the original on 2021-07-14. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  13. ^ "Serverless CMS WebOps Platform Pantheon". mg21.com. 2021-07-14. Archived from the original on 2021-07-14. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  14. ^ "Pantheon Drupal Hosting Plans | Drupal ASU". Drupal.asu.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-08-24. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  15. ^ "Pantheon Brings Drupal to the Cloud on Rackspace – ReadWrite". Readwrite.com. 30 September 2011. Archived from the original on 2014-04-04. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  16. ^ "Pantheon Forks the Data Center". HostReview.com. 2013-07-11. Archived from the original on 2016-02-15. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  17. ^ "IST Pantheon Drupal Cloud Service | UC Berkeley Content Management". Content.berkeley.edu. 2013-02-01. Archived from the original on 2013-06-26. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  18. ^ a b c Belanger, Ashley (2023-04-27). "WebOps platform Pantheon defends hosting "hate groups" as developers quit". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2024-01-04. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  19. ^ "Alliance Defending Freedom". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 2021-11-22. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  20. ^ "Federation for American Immigration Reform". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 2022-10-07. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  21. ^ Koenig, Josh (October 9, 2023). "Open Letter on Elevating Our Standards". Pantheon. Retrieved August 22, 2024.
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