Cloudinary was founded in 2012 in Israel[2] by Itai Lahan (CEO), Tal Lev-Ami (CTO), and Nadav Soferman (CPO).[3] Cloudinary grew organically, building a profitable SaaS service, without venture capital funding.[4] In 2015, the company received a strategic investment from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP),[5] which was BVP's 100th investment in cloud companies.[6]
In 2014, Cloudinary announced fully integrated image processing add-ons leveraging technologies by Imagga, URL2PNG, Aspose, WebPurify and others.[7] In 2015, Cloudinary opened its U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and added video management to its services.[8] In 2019, the company moved to Santa Clara, California, and launched tools for responsive image breakpoint generation.[9]
In 2019, Cloudinary' collaborated with researchers at Google to create the image format JPEG XL, which improves image compression and rendering.[10][11][12] On 7 April 2020, Cloudinary launched a WordPress plug-in for picture and video processing and became a WordPress VIP Platform Partner.[13] In 2021, Cloudinary introduced Cloudinary Labs, a division focused on developing new technologies in visual media. Initial projects from the lab include MediaFlows, a tool for scalable media workflows, and Media Inspector and ServiceWorker, which focus on improving media asset performance and integration.[14]
As of 2022, the company manages more than 50 billion assets for almost 10,000 customers worldwide. Customers include brands such as NBC, Grubhub, Bombas, Peloton, and Petco.[15] In August 2021, Cloudinary joined the MACH Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group calling for openness in technology ecosystems.[16] The company moved into its current San Jose headquarters in 2024.[17]
