London-based Ably, the platform that powers synchronised digital experiences in real time, announced that it has raised $70M (nearly €58.9M) in its Series B round of funding. It was co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital LLP.
In addition, existing investors including Triple Point, Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, and MMC Ventures, also participated in this new funding round.
Funds for growth
The raised capital will help Ably to support and accelerate the growth of its platform to help organisations to offload the complexity of real time data synchronisation at scale for distributed applications, devices, and hybrid cloud environments.
Besides growth, Ably which currently employs 65 people, will also use the funds to add a further 125 hires to strengthen its UK team and grow a strong US presence over the next 15 months.
Digital experiences in real time
In the current world, our everyday digital experiences are in the middle of a realtime revolution. According to Ably, realtime data is only a fraction of the data consumed today, but by 2025 it is estimated that it will be 30 per cent of all global data.
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO & co-founder of Ably, explains, “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.”
However, building this realtime synchronisation capabilities is complex and costly. This is where Ably claims to simplify this.
O’Riordan adds, “Most organisations 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.” Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver event-driven applications.
The company was founded in 2016 by Matthew O’Riordan and Paddy Byers. Organisations such as Bloomberg, HubSpot, Hopin, Verizon, and Tennis Australia use Ably to offload the growing complexity of realtime data synchronisation so they can grow revenue and market share.
Currently, Ably reaches 250 million devices and serves 500 customers across 80 countries per month. And by 2023, it expects to reach one billion devices per month.
About the investors – Insight Partners and Dawn Capital
Insight Partners, a venture capital and private equity firm, invests in high-growth technology and software Scale-up companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, the firm has invested in more than 400 companies and has raised through a series of funds more than $30B in capital commitments.
As for Dawn Capital, it claims to be Europe’s leading specialist B2B software investor, with assets under management of $1.5B. The firm partners with innovative companies that can become category-defining, global titans. It is an early-stage investor, backing companies at Series A and B, and continuing to fund the growth rounds through to exit.
The firms investments includes Mimecast (now NASDAQ-listed with a $3B market cap), iZettle (sold to PayPal for $2.2B cash), Collibra, Showpad, Dataiku, Templafy, Soldo, Quantexa, and Tink, among others.
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