Ably, the realtime data delivery platform, has raised $1 million, in a funding round led by Forward Partners, to fuel its growth and accelerate the development of its technology into new areas. The London-based startup was born in 2013 when co-founding software engineers Matthew O’Riordan and Paddy Byers saw a gap in the market to provide developers with an ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ offering for realtime data transport.
Ably is a realtime data delivery platform that makes it easy for you to add realtime messaging and streaming data to your applications. Right from the start of Ably, the goal was to create a truly developer-friendly service – deterministically reliable and provide world-class documentation, service and support. After three years in development, Ably launched publicly mid 2016 and in less than 12 months has over 2,000 developers using the platform and almost 100 customers around the world, mostly in the US.
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO of Ably, was previously co-founder of Econsultancy, sold to Centaur Media plc in 2012. In March 2016 Ashley Friedlein, Matthew’s co-founder at Econsultancy, joined Ably as an investor and adviser.
Ably’s technology powers next generation digital experiences. Ones which are live rather than static, where data is in motion rather than at rest. Use cases include live chat, realtime location tracking, live document collaboration, gaming and elearning. One customer even uses Ably for their air traffic control system for drones.
The investment will be used to bolster Ably’s engineering team to meet customer growth and accelerate development. This includes not only Ably’s unique existing realtime platform but also an exciting roadmap with pioneering new features like ‘smart notifications’ and Ably’s Exchange, which provides a universal message bus for businesses to syndicate realtime data to other businesses.
Matthew O’Riordan, Founder and CEO of Ably, commented: “We are hugely excited to announce this funding and to be working with Forward Partners. This investment ensures we keep our global competitive tech advantage and deliver on a product roadmap that we cannot wait to make available to developers. Realtime, or live, experiences are becoming more commonplace but we see huge potential for a next generation of compelling apps and services that we help make possible.”
