Docker

Docker, Inc. builds the commercial tooling around Docker, the container technology it released as open source in March 2013. The company began life as dotCloud, a platform-as-a-service business founded in Paris in 2008 by Kamel Founadi, Solomon Hykes and Sebastien Pahl and incorporated in the United States in 2010; it took the Docker name on 29 October 2013 after the container project eclipsed the original PaaS.

The revenue-generating products are Docker Desktop, the local development application for Windows, macOS and Linux, and Docker Hub, the registry that hosts and distributes container images. Both sit on top of open-source components the company still maintains, including Docker Engine, BuildKit and Compose, several of which are developed under the Moby umbrella project. Docker also contributes to containerd and runC, which it donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

The business Docker runs today is narrower than the one it built in the 2010s. In November 2019 it sold its Docker Enterprise platform business to Mirantis, restructured around developers and raised $35 million from Benchmark and Insight Partners, with Scott Johnston stepping up as chief executive. Monetisation followed in August 2021, when Docker Desktop moved to paid subscriptions for larger companies under a new Docker Business tier.

Since 2022 the company has pushed into software supply-chain security and, more recently, into infrastructure for AI agents. Recent releases include Docker Hardened Images, a catalogue of minimal, attested base images made free and open source in December 2025; Docker Compose support for defining agents and models; Docker Offload for running GPU workloads in the cloud; and Docker Sandboxes, a microVM isolation layer for running AI agents. Docker acquired MCP Defender in September 2025 to add runtime security for Model Context Protocol tooling.

Don Johnson, who founded and ran Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and was an early technical leader at Amazon Web Services, became chief executive on 12 February 2025. Docker is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and operates as a fully remote company with optional office hubs in Paris and Seattle. It has raised comparatively little capital by current infrastructure-software standards: the last disclosed primary round was a $105 million Series C led by Bain Capital Ventures in March 2022.