Community Site Builder Acquia Raises $15M

Acquia, which helps companies build community sites using the open-source content management system Drupal, has raised $15 million in Series D funding from Tenaya Capital, Northbridge Venture partners and Sigma Partners.

Burlington, Mass.-based Acquia recently helped launch Twitter’s new developer community site, which is powered by the downloadable version of its product. Other customers use a hosted version and/or pay for support services.

Besides Twitter, Acquia customers include Al Jazeera, Mercedes-Benz, Stanford University, Intuit and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Acquia CEO Tom Erickson said his company’s story is an interesting one because it mixes open source consumer technology with the enterprise. “It’s a Red Hat story in that sense,” he said, “because our products are competitive with emerging things rather than existing markets.”

Erickson said the new funding would be used for international expansion and marketing. Acquia has gone back to the funding well often since 2007, raising about $38.5 million over four rounds.