Ably, a platform that powers synchronised digital experiences in realtime, has closed a US$70 million (€58.85 million) Series B funding round.
The funding will support and accelerate Ably’s growth and platform innovation to provide organisations with a comprehensive solution to offload the growing complexity of realtime data synchronisation at scale for distributed applications, devices, and hybrid cloud environments. Ably currently reaches 250 million devices per month and serves 500 customers across 80 countries.
The funding round was co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital LLP. Existing investors Triple Point, Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, and MMC, also participated in this new funding round
Data consumed in realtime powers many digital experiences, whether it be virtual events, news and financial information, or connected IoT devices. Realtime data is only a fraction of the data consumed today, but by 2025 it is estimated that it will be 30% of all global data.
However, building homegrown realtime synchronisation capabilities is complex and costly. Ably simplifies this; it is the de facto platform for developers at organisations of all sizes, empowering the likes of Bloomberg, HubSpot, Hopin, Verizon and Tennis Australia to deliver realtime experiences to their users.
“When we launched Ably five years ago, we had a clear vision that realtime interactions would underpin rather than just augment our everyday digital experiences. Today, our most important daily and digital experiences happen in realtime. It’s business critical now, and organisations realise they must keep up and transform to remain relevant,” says Matthew O’Riordan, CEO and co-founder of Ably.
“Yet, at the same time, most don’t have the in-house capabilities nor the time to do this efficiently at scale. Early on we made technology decisions to provide a global edge network engineered for efficiency, reliability and ease of use. In the same way that content delivery networks underpin large parts of the internet, Ably is the invisible platform and infrastructure layer that powers synchronised digital experiences in realtime at speed and at scale.”
Max Freiert, product group lead at HubSpot, comments, “Ably is one of the key technologies that underpins our business. Its real-time platform and infrastructure layer seamlessly supports HubSpot’s entire real-time needs, helping us to meet our technical, business, and product development requirements. With Ably we have innovated and taken new products to market much faster while significantly reducing our operational engineering overhead.”
Ably currently employs 65 people; it plans to add a further 125 hires to strengthen its core UK team and grow a strong US presence over the next 15 months.
“Insight has an established track record of investing in industry disruptors and Ably is a natural fit for our portfolio,” says Teddie Wardi, managing director at Insight Partners. “Ably has demonstrated it is a visionary when it comes to solving the challenges of synchronising digital experiences in realtime. The company is already the market leader and is primed for further growth in what we believe is an uncapped market.”
Norman Fiore, general partner and co-founder at Dawn Capital, comments, “We all live our lives in realtime. And now, we expect our digital lives to reflect this – whether tracking parcels, gaming with friends, querying inventory or updating business-critical infrastructure. As the infrastructure and platform powering these experiences, Ably is helping companies operate in realtime. I’m both hugely impressed by what Ably has achieved to date and excited to be supporting the team to innovate and scale further.”
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