Cloud9
American esports organization
Cloud9 Esports, Inc., or simply Cloud9 (C9), is an American professional esports company based in Santa Monica, California. The company was originally founded as a professional League of Legends team by Jack and Paullie Etienne in May 2013 and was incorporated into Cloud9 Esports, Inc. on September 6, 2016. Cloud9 has received US$78 million in total raised equity via venture capital funding and was ranked the world's fifth-most valuable esports organization in mid-2022.
Cloud9 has held divisions in numerous esports throughout its existence, establishing eight by 2014. In 2018, Cloud9 won three international championships: the Rocket League Championship Series Season 6 World Championship, the 2018 Overwatch League Grand Finals, and the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018. The company currently operates four franchised teams: Cloud9 League of Legends of the League Championship Series (LCS), Cloud9 Valorant of the Valorant Champions Tour Americas, Cloud9 New York in the Call of Duty League and Cloud9 Rainbow Six in the BLAST R6 North America League. They previously operated the London Spitfire in the Overwatch League. They also operate or have operated non-franchised teams in Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, EA Sports FC, Fortnite, Halo, Hearthstone, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros., Teamfight Tactics, and World of Warcraft.
History
2013: Beginnings
The team that would become Cloud9 originated after esports organization Quantic Gaming released all of their League of Legends players, these being Balls (An Van Lee), Meteos (William Hartman), Hai (Hai Du Lam), Sneaky (Zachary Scuderi) and LemonNation (Daerek Hart).
The public source identifies “Cloud9” as american esports organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cloud9, American and esports.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19827848. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2016, 2022 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cloud9” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.