Ably secures $7M to set a new standard in realtime edge messaging
Tags: news, showdev, startup, realtime
Published: 2020-04-08 14:01:18

Ably has closed a $7M Series A funding round led by [MMC Ventures](https://www.mmcventures.com/), with our seed funders [Forward Partners](https://forwardpartners.com/) co-investing. This funding enables us to deliver on our mission to provide the new standard of realtime edge messaging infrastructure required for a connected future.

![0*6W-0nRqz_qg1CT_V.jpeg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1586353424918/4alj5ECUW.jpeg)

Consumers today, more so than ever, expect their digital experiences to be realtime, yet as you know it can be incredibly difficult to deliver that. Ably solves this problem by providing simple APIs that developers can depend on, so that they can get on with building their apps and services.

This funding comes as a result of huge milestones for Ably:

- We’ve streamed 1.5 trillion realtime messages over the Ably network
- 100 billion realtime messages now streamed to 50 million end-users each month
- 150% year-on-year growth since 2017
- Some of the largest companies in the world depend on Ably to deliver mission-critical realtime experiences around the world

We’re using this funding to scale our team — we’ve already quadrupled in size since 2019 — so that we can focus on three things:

- **Investment in our core [platform](https://www.ably.io/platform)** so we can build more features that we know developers need, such as the upcoming Data Deltas and the recent [rewind](https://www.ably.io/blog/channel-rewind/) capability on channels.
- **Further [integrate](https://www.ably.io/reactor) into other event-driven platforms** to help developers overcome the fragmented ecosystem we’re all operating in. Check out our recent [Zapier, IFTTT, and Cloudflare Workers](https://www.ably.io/blog/zapier-ifttt-cloudflare-workers/) integrations if you haven’t already.
- **Explore and support more open [protocols](https://www.ably.io/adapters)** so developers can choose the right tool for the job. Right now we support [Server-Sent Events (SSE)](https://www.ably.io/blog/server-sent-events-and-ably/), [MQTT](https://www.ably.io/documentation/mqtt), [STOMP](https://www.ably.io/documentation/general/queues), [AMQP](https://www.ably.io/documentation/general/queues), and [proprietary protocols](https://support.ably.io/support/solutions/articles/3000054127-can-you-help-ease-the-pain-of-migration-from-another-data-stream-network-) of other realtime [providers](https://www.ably.io/migrate/from-pusher).

![1*d-Bf2s0uF4RRSgOm3Ak12w.jpeg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1586353508516/M7RwMCr-k.jpeg)

Ably has come a long way since 2013 when Matthew O’Riordan, Ably’s CEO, and Paddy Byers, Ably’s CTO, were unable to find a realtime solution that provided adequate guarantees for performance without compromising on data integrity or reliability. They launched Ably in 2016 after three years of intense research and development, investing over 50,000 hours into building the foundation of Ably’s complete realtime edge messaging platform.

Our focus from day one was architecting the Ably platform around Four Pillars of Dependability:

- Performance
- Reliability
- Availability
- Integrity (of data)

Today, Ably is still the only realtime edge messaging platform that is able to operate within strict, dependable, transparent boundaries, at any scale. It’s why we’re honoured to see so many engineers from tech startups to large enterprises, across numerous industries such as SaaS, mobility, sport, eCommerce and eLearning, to name a few, trust us for their mission-critical realtime needs.

Everyone at Ably is incredibly grateful for all of our customers who’ve supported us and we feel privileged to work with you, especially those that have trusted us as we’ve grown.

![0*5BBdbMFf8vh5IAOv.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1586353589036/oROupstVo.png)

If you want to be part of Ably’s next stage and empower developers everywhere to build next-generation experiences, check out our [careers page](https://www.ably.io/careers) :).

*Originally published at [https://www.ably.io/blog/series-a](https://www.ably.io/blog/series-a) on 06 Apr 2020.*