Funding enables the company to quickly bring new API tools to millions of developers and enterprise customers while fueling the growth of rapidly expanding community
RapidAPI, provider of the world’s largest API Hub that enables millions of developers and enterprises to find, connect to, and manage thousands of APIs, announced that it has raised $150M in Series D funding at a $1B valuation. The round was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Qumra, and many of the company’s existing investors, which include Andreessen Horowitz, M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), Viola Growth, Green Bay, and Grove Ventures.
“This has created a huge demand and subsequent shortage of developers, hindering an organization’s ability to fully invest in digital transformation initiatives. As a result, companies are turning to APIs and tools like RapidAPI to realize the productivity and innovation benefits of digitizing their organization.”
RapidAPI will use the investment to continue to scale its API Hub, adding more capabilities to help developers create and collaborate on APIs – following its release of API Testing tools and acquisition of API development tool Paw. RapidAPI has also seen tremendous adoption by Global 2000 enterprises and will use the new funding to grow its customer base by expanding key enterprise capabilities including governance and management.
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“Demand for digital solutions and software innovation is increasing rapidly, and without enough developers, the world needs APIs to continue building software,” said Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We believe that RapidAPI plays a critical role in supporting the API economy and has demonstrated impressive growth and execution to accelerate developer adoption and supply of APIs. We are excited to partner with Iddo and the team to support their mission to drive modern software development.”
APIs – Solving the Developer Gap
As companies realize the importance of accelerating their digital transformation and software-centric initiatives, they increasingly turn to investment in software development. However, a shortage in software developers combined with tough hiring conditions amidst the “Great Resignation” makes scaling engineering organizations difficult. As a result, many companies are looking for tools – such as APIs – to bridge their developer shortage.
The developer gap has fueled the rapid expansion of the API economy – which is currently growing at over 63% CAGR.1 APIs – which provide encapsulated pieces of functionality that developers can embed in their apps like “Lego pieces” – save developers critical time when adding common functions to their applications such as charging credit cards, sending messages, or getting geolocation information.
RapidAPI’s The State of Enterprise APIs Survey found that nearly all respondents (98%) believe that APIs are an essential part of their organization’s digital transformation, and 97% agree that successfully executing an API strategy is essential to secure organizations’ future revenue and growth. Its State of APIs Developer Survey found that a majority (68.5%) of developers indicated that they will rely on APIs more in 2022 for all of their coding projects.
“The pandemic and the rapid change it has precipitated over the last two years has compelled almost every company to become a digital player very quickly. It’s not nice to have, it’s basic survival,” said Iddo Gino, CEO and Founder of RapidAPI. “This has created a huge demand and subsequent shortage of developers, hindering an organization’s ability to fully invest in digital transformation initiatives. As a result, companies are turning to APIs and tools like RapidAPI to realize the productivity and innovation benefits of digitizing their organization.”
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Rapid Growth at RapidAPI
Fueled by the increasing focus on APIs, RapidAPI grew its developer community to 4M developers over the last year and increased ARR by well over 100 percent. ARR growth for RapidAPI was fueled by both self-service users subscribing to RapidAPI and Global 2000 enterprise companies strategically adopting RapidAPI as their own internal API Hub.
Self-service developers leverage RapidAPI to consume paid APIs, as well as set up private workspaces using RapidAPI for Teams where they can collaborate on internal APIs and microservices. Over 25,000 new developers subscribed to paid plans on RapidAPI in 2021 alone.
Enterprise clients create a private internal API hub with RapidAPI, where all of their developers can publish and consume APIs. This easier access to APIs helps companies break down silos, accelerate digital transformation, and reduce time to market of new initiatives.
RapidAPI has seen rapid adoption across multiple enterprise sectors, including financial services, automotive, energy, and retail. RapidAPI almost tripled the number of enterprise deployments in 2021 and plans to continue growing at that rate in 2022.
Expanded Leadership Team
To support and further accelerate a rapidly growing developer and enterprise customer base, RapidAPI has expanded its management team to include seasoned veterans in the API and software industries including Vijay Gill, SVP of Engineering, Wade Wegner, SVP of Product, and Mark Gurvis, SVP of Sales.
“We’ve invested in RapidAPI early on – with the vision of creating a nexus in the nascent API economy and empowering developers to leverage the wealth of APIs available to them,” said Martin Cassado, General partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “I’m very excited to see how RapidAPI has been able to scale that vision, combining innovation and action to scale its public API hub and bring it to some of the largest enterprise companies in the world. The addition of new team members to its world-class leadership team will enable RapidAPI to continue their upward trajectory at the rapid rate of the growing API economy.”
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