New financing positions commercetools for continued disruption of the global ecommerce software market
Munich, Sept. 13, 2021 – commercetools, the pioneer of the headless commerce movement, today announced a $140m investment completing its series C funding round. Led by global tech investor Accel, alongside existing investors Insight Partners and REWE Group, the capital raised will fuel the company’s global expansion and allow commercetools to continue to help enterprises embrace the modern way of building their ecommerce environments.
Dirk Hoerig, founder and CEO of commercetools, is excited that Accel chose to support the company in its mission to become the global market leader in commerce experience technologies. “We are singularly focused on providing all the tools and building blocks our customers need to deliver outstanding shopping experiences and innovation to consumers,” Hoerig said. “This latest funding round will further accelerate our growth towards this target.”
commercetools, which recently secured a spot on the exclusive 2021 list of unicorn companies recognizing privately held companies worth over $1 billion, has experienced accelerated growth in the past year as the global pandemic changed commerce forever. When the pandemic hit, companies needed to react in days to supply chain issues, the shuttering of brick-and-mortar stores, and ultimately how consumers interacted with them. Legacy commerce platforms lacked the speed and agility to enable companies to shift on a dime and stifled their ability to capitalize on the explosive growth of commerce.
“commercetools is leading the movement of a new way to do commerce that is API first,” Hoenig said. “When we pioneered the headless commerce space eight years ago, we built the foundation to change our whole industry for the better and re-invented ecommerce.”
Big global brands are embracing the Modern Commerce movement, with companies including AT&T, Audi, John Lewis, The LEGO Group, Takeaway.com and Volkswagen leveraging commercetools to deliver superior commerce experiences across all touchpoints with agility and speed. Companies using commercetools are also positioned to handle nearly anything the market can throw at them.
“The Audi Commerce Platform has been built with three core values in its DNA: Speed, Adaptiveness and Effectiveness,” said Matthes Kohndrow, Product Manager of Ecommerce at Audi. “With commercetools as the backbone for our platform, we were able to build a scalable, global commerce infrastructure aligned with our values. As a result, we can now leverage new e-commerce business models at Audi in only a few weeks.”
commercetools plans to use the capital increase to expand sales and marketing efforts in North America, Europe, and APAC, which will ultimately help more businesses eliminate legacy commerce platforms and embrace the modern way of building a commerce environment. The funding will also be used to extend the commercetools product portfolio and expand its partner ecosystem. This includes investing in third-party channel relationships that will make technology integrations and extensions with commercetools even easier.
Accel has been investing in technology companies globally for over 35 years, including Atlassian, UiPath, Spotify and Slack. “The chance to invest in a fast-growing, innovative commerce platform was one we could not pass up,” said Ping Li, a partner at Accel. “commercetools provides ecommerce enterprises the technology necessary to capture revenue in the rapidly growing global ecommerce market.”
About commercetools
commercetools provides modern technology that enables businesses to overcome the limitations of traditional commerce platforms. In 2013 introduced a modular, API-first cloud-native commerce platform that utilizes microservices to give businesses the flexibility and speed they need to deliver exceptional digital commerce experiences. That innovative solution, known today as “Headless commerce,” has become the foundation of modern technology systems. Established in Munich, Germany, commercetools now has offices across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific and employs over 300 people. Its software has been implemented by Fortune 500 companies across multiple industries, from retail to manufacturing, to telecommunications and fashion. More information at commercetools.com.
About Accel
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Bumble, CrowdStrike, DJI, Facebook, Fiverr, Flipkart, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Squarespace, Tenable, and UiPath are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 35+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses. For more, visit www.accel.com or www.twitter.com/accel.
Company contact
Stephanie Wittmann
Global Communications Manager, commercetools
Tel: +49 (0)173 615 56 01