API (声网Agora)

声网Agora融资历史：自2013年成立至2020年6月上市前，声网已经完成了5轮融资，第5次融资是在2020年2月，其完成了5000万美元的C+轮融资。截至上市前，声网Agora已相继从多家投资机构，如顺威资本、Sig中国、Coatue Management、Morningside、GGVC、IDGC和其他投资机构，共筹集了1.704亿美元的资金。机构股东中，晨兴资本占股15.7%，SIG占股12.5%，顺为资本占股10.2%，Coatue占股9%。

3Guns-DW:

关于API(声网），基本搞明白了。它跟zoom技术上没啥不同，但它做的是不同的路子：Communication platform as a service (CPaaS)：建infrastructure给别的公司/social media/app/streaming用，提供API--这也真对应了它的股票符号。从技术上讲，它的network routing and private VPN 这个厉害，zoom的视频压缩厉害。API对应的是TWLO (Twilio )都是做CPaaS.

纪小姐选公司：聊聊最新上市的声网Agora

Agora.io Catching the Wave of Live Streaming

以下为节选：

* Eric Yuan left WebEx Communication to fund Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ: ZM), pushing a USD 23 billion dollar public company into the spotlight. Additionally, another former employee at WebEx named Tony Zhao built Agora.io in 2014. Both companies are leading real-time voice and video providers, providing unique communication platforms for users. Zoom focuses on video conferencing while Agora.io mainly serves mobile applications.
* Agora built a network of over 200,000 developers, adopting a developer-centric approach. This enabled them to add voice chat, video chat and real-time broadcasting features to their apps within 30 minutes in addition to making the platform easily customizable. Most customers are in the gaming, social, retail and education sectors. -----API非常容易program到别的app里面，这个很重要。App越多，用户越多，它越挣钱。
* After the first 10,000 minutes, customers pay USD 0.99 per 1,000 minutes for voice communication and audio broadcast calls, or USD 3.99 per 1,000 minutes for video communication and broadcast calls (with additional fees for high-volume). Agora powers more than 300 million minutes of communications per day and has passed two billion SDK installs in September 2018, becoming the most widely adopted API for real-time communication in the world. Among others, the company is backed by Coatue Management, SIG, GGV Capital and Morningside, and had raised USD 125 million to date.
* Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Communication platform as a service (CPaaS)
* UCaaS and CPaaS offer cost advantages. Similar to the difference between SaaS and PaaS, UCaaS is suitable for companies looking for finished solutions while CPaaS allows for more customization and serves as a back-end communication infrastructure that allows organizations to add real-time communication features to their applications by deploying API.
* **The CPaaS markets in both the US and China were originally driven by startups such as Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) and Agora.** While it is a nascent market today, according to Statista, the global CPaaS market is expected to hit USD 8 billion in 2019. In 2018, the United States and Europe currently hold the largest share and the APAC market is expected to lead the global compound growth rate of 27% from 2017 to 2027. We anticipate multiple years of growth for the market, in part because an increasing number of social and gaming apps are likely to add real-time interactive features to compete for user engagement time. Further, traditional healthcare and education platforms are moving both their core and supporting functions to mobile.
* To solve the pain points of traditional solutions regarding latency, network overhead, noise, delay and packet dropouts, Agora addressed the challenges in three ways: 1) optimization of network instability. While traditional conference systems perform well on corporate networks, they do not work so well on public networks with poor Internet connections. Agora’s technology is capable of handling a variety of environments including Starbucks cafés and even cities in India with 2G networks 2) communication optimization, which eliminates background noise, echos and other issues occurring during calls 3) terminal adaptation, which delivers a seamless experience for users with different mobile devices. Besides software, global network infrastructure is also crucial to a CPaaS provider, as one of the biggest challenges of real-time communication services is transoceanic transmissions, like from US to China, where packet loss is easily incurred. To combat such issues, Agora has deployed more than 65 data centers and nearly one thousand servers around the world and is expected to have more than 100 data centers this year. Further, they have created their own proprietary virtual network with distribution centers around the world. Those centers have their own transmission routing paths to avoid packet loss and to ensure the quality of real-time data transmission across continents, countries and carriers, something ideal for businesses with the needs of global expansion.
* 2016 and 2017 were explosive years for live streaming content in China and Agora caught the wave to serve Douyu and Huya (NYSE: HUYA), two top gaming streaming platforms in China.
* Agora is behind a variety of commonly used social and dating apps such as China’s Momo, America’s The Meet Group and India’s Hike Messenger.
* Agora’s newly-released E-commerce solutions are adopted by domestic and overseas E-commerce including Gravy.Line, Bulbul.tv and Kumu.
* Agora’s education platform allows VIPKid, TAL Education and other institutions to conduct live interactive teaching sessions to both small, intimate groups and mass audiences.