I’m thrilled to congratulate RapidAPI – the Next-Generation API Platform – on a successful Series D funding round and their newly minted unicorn status.
M12’s initial investment in RapidAPI as the lead of their series B round was announced in June 2019, and since then, RapidAPI has significantly expanded its product offerings. We recognized at the time that the API economy was a significant and escalating trend and was revolutionizing the way organizations developed applications. Indeed, the API economy is vast and growing rapidly – developers are increasingly using microservices and utilizing APIs to develop faster, using existing APIs rather than building their own functionality, making them a key element in software development today. Moreover, companies have increasingly invested in software development over the last few years as they realize the importance of accelerating their digital transformation. However, a shortage of software developers along with tight hiring conditions amidst the “Great Resignation” make scaling engineering organizations difficult. As a result, many companies are looking for tools to fill their developer shortage – such as APIs.
I had my first encounter with Iddo on May 2017 through a friend (@Gadi Moshe SVB), and he impressed me right away with his vision and wisdom on one hand and his maturity and self-confidence on the other, which are hard to come by at such a young age. We required a couple of sessions, patience, and persistence, but fast forward 24 months later (back then, that was the typical period between one round to another), we have led their B round.
Over the years, RapidAPI has maintained significant momentum, fueled by self-service growth and developer-led adoption. RapidAPI offers a platform for APIs’ creation and collaboration, supporting the full API development lifecycle – from designing APIs through testing and monitoring, sharing, and exposing them. It distributes the platform both as a self-service development tool and to larger enterprises with private cloud & on-prem solutions. On its self-service platform, RapidAPI is offering a catalog of over 10,000 public APIs, serving a fast-growing community of over 2.5M developers, including teams at 65% of Fortune 500 companies, generating Billions of API Calls per month.
Post-investment, we promptly explored opportunities to support RapidAPI’s growth. Microsoft is selling Azure Cognitive Services through the Rapid public marketplace. The services are fully integrated and billed through Rapid to their end customers. Azure was the first major public cloud to be part of the Rapid marketplace for transactability.
RapidAPI’s track record to date has shown steady growth and anticipation of market trends, allowing it to remain at the forefront of the evolving API economy. With this latest round of funding, the company will be able to move even faster and capitalize on growing API adoption.
I am excited to continue serving as a board director and work with new investors, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Citi Ventures, and Qumra Capital, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Viola, Green Bay, and Grove. Congratulations to Iddo and the entire team on this significant milestone! We look forward to your continued growth.
