DigitalOcean
Company History
DigitalOcean History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2011 in New York City, New York
When was DigitalOcean founded?
DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 in New York City, New York by Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, Jeff Carr, Mitch Wainer and Alec Hartman, making it 15 years old.
- Founded
- 2011
- Founding place
- New York City, New York
- Founders
- Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, Jeff Carr, Mitch Wainer and Alec Hartman
- Headquarters today
- Broomfield, Colorado, United States
- Milestones documented
- 12 (2011–2026)
- Current CEO
- Paddy Srinivasan
- Acquisitions
- 3
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2011 | DigitalOcean founded in New York |
| 2012 | Techstars Boulder and $5 SSD Droplets |
| 2014 | Series A Funding |
| 2015 | $83 million Series B |
| 2018 | Mark Templeton becomes CEO |
| 2019 | Yancey Spruill Becomes CEO |
| 2021 | NYSE IPO (DOCN) |
| 2022 | Acquires Cloudways |
| 2023 | Acquires Paperspace |
| 2024 | Paddy Srinivasan becomes CEO |
| 2025 | $901 million revenue |
| 2026 | AI-Native Cloud and Russell 1000 |
- Where was DigitalOcean founded?
- DigitalOcean was founded in New York City, New York in 2011.
- Who founded DigitalOcean?
- DigitalOcean was founded by Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, Jeff Carr, Mitch Wainer and Alec Hartman.
- When did DigitalOcean start?
- DigitalOcean was founded in 2011.
- How old is DigitalOcean?
- DigitalOcean is 15 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Brothers Ben and Moisey Uretsky ran ServerStack, a managed hosting business in New York, before starting DigitalOcean in 2011 with Mitch Wainer, Jeff Carr, and Alec Hartman. They saw that cloud platforms like AWS were powerful but hard for individual developers to use. After the Techstars Boulder accelerator in 2012, DigitalOcean launched SSD-based virtual servers for $5 a month, and the offer spread quickly through developer communities.
Founders
Ben Uretsky
Ben Uretsky co-founded DigitalOcean in 2011 and served as its CEO until 2018, leading it through Techstars, early venture rounds including the 2015 Series B, and global data center expansion. He previously co-founded ServerStack with his brother Moisey. Mark Templeton succeeded him as CEO in 2018. Education: Stuyvesant High School. Uretsky served as chief executive of DigitalOcean. Ben Uretsky was born in 1983.
Moisey Uretsky
Moisey Uretsky co-founded DigitalOcean in 2011 and held product leadership roles, shaping its focus on a simple control panel and fast server provisioning. Like his brother, he came from the managed hosting business ServerStack. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Jeff Carr
Jeff Carr co-founded DigitalOcean in 2011. Frustrated by the extreme complexity and opaque pricing of AWS, he helped design the initial architecture for 'Droplets' (simple, affordable virtual machines) that could be spun up by a solo developer in under a minute. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Mitch Wainer
Mitch Wainer co-founded DigitalOcean in 2011. He was the absolute driving force behind the company's legendary content marketing strategy, building a massive library of thousands of high-quality tutorials that organically captured millions of developers searching for server configurations on Google. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Alec Hartman
Alec Hartman co-founded DigitalOcean in 2011 alongside his partners from ServerStack. He played a critical role in securing the company's early funding rounds and establishing the incredibly developer-friendly brand identity that allowed the company to survive against massive tech monopolies. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
DigitalOcean founded in New York
Ben and Moisey Uretsky, Mitch Wainer, Jeff Carr, and Alec Hartman start the company.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTechstars Boulder and $5 SSD Droplets
Launches SSD-based cloud servers starting at $5 per month.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeries A Funding
DigitalOcean raised $37.2 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz in March 2014.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$83 million Series B
Funding led by Access Industries with Andreessen Horowitz participating.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMark Templeton becomes CEO
Mark Templeton became CEO of DigitalOcean in 2018. Former Citrix CEO; led DigitalOcean from June 2018 until July 2019.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgYancey Spruill Becomes CEO
Yancey Spruill became chief executive of DigitalOcean in 2019.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAcquires Paperspace
Buys the GPU cloud platform for $111 million to expand AI offerings.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgPaddy Srinivasan becomes CEO
Former GoTo CEO succeeds Yancey Spruill in February 2024.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$901 million revenue
Full-year revenue up 15% with $259 million net income; December run-rate reaches $1 billion.
Source: investors.digitalocean.comAI-Native Cloud and Russell 1000
Launches AI-Native Cloud at Deploy 2026, joins the Russell 1000, and reports Q2 revenue growth of 29%.
Source: investors.digitalocean.comMajor Acquisitions
Cloudways
2022Managed hosting platform for agencies and SMBs.
CSS-Tricks
2022Front-end web development publication added to DigitalOcean's developer content.
Paperspace
2023GPU cloud and machine learning platform.
Keep researching DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Company History FAQ
What is the chronological history of DigitalOcean from 2011 to the present?
Founded in 2011 in NYC, DigitalOcean graduated from Techstars in 2012 and went viral in 2013 with $5 SSD Droplets. It expanded globally to 15+ data center regions, launched Managed Kubernetes in 2018, went public on the NYSE in 2021, and acquired Cloudways (2022) and Paperspace (2023) to power AI and SMB workloads.
When did DigitalOcean achieve its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange?
DigitalOcean listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021 under the ticker DOCN, raising about $775 million.
How did DigitalOcean evolve from unmanaged VPS hosting to a complete cloud platform?
Between 2016 and 2021, DigitalOcean transitioned from pure virtual machines to a modern cloud ecosystem by releasing Spaces object storage (2017), Managed Kubernetes (2018), Managed Databases (2019), and App Platform PaaS (2020).
When was DigitalOcean's Hacktoberfest founded and what is its global impact?
Hacktoberfest was founded in October 2014. Over a decade later, it has inspired millions of open-source contributions across GitHub and GitLab, partnering with companies like Intel, Docker, and GitHub to foster global software collaboration.
How has DigitalOcean positioned itself in the generative AI era?
Through its Paperspace acquisition, DigitalOcean launched scalable NVIDIA GPU instances, serverless inference APIs, and fine-tuning pipelines, making it the preferred cloud infrastructure for emerging generative AI startups and independent ML researchers.
Where is DigitalOcean headquartered?
DigitalOcean was founded in New York City and is now headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, according to its SEC filings and earnings releases.
How did DigitalOcean start?
DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 by Ben and Moisey Uretsky. They previously ran a managed hosting company and realized that Amazon AWS was incredibly complicated and expensive for solo developers. They built DigitalOcean purely to make spinning up a cloud server (a "Droplet") take exactly 55 seconds.
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