# Taylor Otwell

> Taylor Otwell is the Arkansas-based creator of Laravel and founder and CEO of the company behind its PHP framework and commercial developer tools. He released Laravel in 2011, built a business around products including Forge, and accepted a $57 million Series A investment from Accel in 2024 to support a broader product and infrastructure roadmap.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Laravel
- **Organizations:** Laravel, UserScape, ArcBest Freight
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Information Technology, Arkansas Tech University
- **Known for:** Created and released the Laravel PHP framework in 2011., Built a bootstrapped business around commercial products including Forge, Envoyer, Nova and Vapor., Led Laravel through its $57 million Series A with Accel in 2024.

## Career timeline

- **2004-2008** — Studied information technology at Arkansas Tech University.
- **After college** — Worked at ArcBest Freight, primarily using .NET and COBOL.
- **2011** — Released Laravel; joined Ian Landsman’s UserScape later that year.
- **2013** — Spoke at the first Laracon in Washington, DC, attended by 90 people.
- **2014** — Launched Laravel Forge, creating a commercial business around Laravel.
- **2015** — Began working full time on his own Laravel business in January.
- **2024** — Announced a $57 million Series A with Accel on September 5 and continued as CEO.
- **2026** — Continued leading Laravel as the company expanded its Cloud and AI tooling.

## Achievements

- Created and released the Laravel PHP framework in 2011.
- Built a bootstrapped business around commercial products including Forge, Envoyer, Nova and Vapor.
- Led Laravel through its $57 million Series A with Accel in 2024.
- Helped develop a developer community with conferences, independent educators and open-source contributors.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Laravel released AI SDK v1.0 on September 23, extending the company’s Laravel-native AI tooling.
- **2026-07** — Otwell discussed Laravel, AI-assisted development and his working methods with Matt Stauffer on the July 21 Laravel Podcast.
- **2026-07** — Laravel’s July 29 Laracon recap covered editor tooling, Cloud managed queues, scale-to-zero and human approval for AI tool calls.

## Links

- Website: http://taylorotwell.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotwell
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/taylorotwell
- GitHub: https://github.com/taylorotwell
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/taylorotwell.bsky.social
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorcodes/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/taylor-otwell
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-22