In recent years, there has been an explosion in the use of APIs – interfaces that software applications use to communicate with each other. When asked to predict API usage in 2022 in a recent survey, 90.5% of responding developers said they expected to use more or the same APIs in 2021, while only 3.8% thought they would use less. The challenge is that as new APIs and protocols are released, some are not supported by existing API management and security platforms. Some developer teams struggle to use APIs as a result, leading to duplicated efforts, wasted engineering hours, and missed revenue opportunities.
At least, that’s how Rory Blundell sees it. He is the co-founder of Gravity, a startup that builds tools for designing, maintaining, managing, and deploying both asynchronous APIs (ie, those that return data later) and synchronous APIs (APIs that return data immediately). Unlike traditional API management solutions used today, which only work with the same APIs, they are different from some legacy ones – they limit the types of applications they can manage.
A year after growing its client base to more than 150 clients, Gravity has closed a $30 million round of funding led by Riverside Acceleration Capital along with Kreos Capital, AlbionVC and Oxx. Blundell told TechCrunch in an email that the revenue will drive an “expanded” go-to-market strategy and an “aggressive” product roadmap in the coming months, bringing the company’s total revenue to $42 million.
“APIs are the lifeblood of innovative companies. Whether it’s delivering and consuming internally to take new products to market faster and more efficiently, or using consumer-facing APIs as a revenue stream, APIs are now a core building block of successful businesses,” said Blundell. “As more organizations make synchronous and asynchronous API ecosystems the core of their business, technical teams must now more than ever embrace API complexity without sacrificing security. This is the issue that Gravite solves.
Blundell founded Gravity in 2014 with developers Aziz Ilamrani, David Brasley, Nicolas Geraud and Titouan Compaigne. Frustrated by what they perceived to be a lack of innovation in the API tool space, the team launched an open platform for API management, Gravitee – the company’s name – to hundreds of thousands of downloads. Blundell and team started offering paid services on top of Gravitye to fund the open source project.
The Gravity platform can be deployed on-premise, self-hosted, or used as part of a Gravity software-as-a-service plan. Features in all editions include an “adaptive, risk-based” multi-factor authentication system, which – as the name suggests – automatically attempts to enforce certain authentication conditions based on the risk of API access requests. Gravity ships with a drag-and-drop graphical tool for designing and deploying APIs before mock testing, as well as a dashboard where users can visualize components of their API deployments to identify potentially problematic usage.
“In terms of legacy vendors, ApiG—later acquired by Google—can be considered an early pioneer in the API management space, and we consider them to be in the ‘API 1.0’ category. Next, newer companies like Kong, Tycoon, and WSO2…are considered ‘API 2.0’ vendors.” They can be adopted,” Blundell said. “We believe the industry is moving toward ‘API 3.0’: standardization, security and composition across multiple protocols that includes synchronous and asynchronous technologies and an event-driven architecture.”
Gravitee’s competitors include Blobr, which offers software for exposing and monetizing enterprise APIs. StepZen, which is building graph technology to help connect and visualize various APIs; And well-capitalized startups like Postman, which raised $225 million last August. But Blundell argues there is enough capital to go around.
It’s not just magical thinking – especially in light of predictions that APIs will become cyber security’s primary attack vector. Investors have poured more than $2 billion into API companies in 2020, according to a source. About 40% of large organizations use more than 250 APIs, another reports. And at least one analyst projects that the API management market will be worth $21.68 billion by 2028.
“We have a lot of government contracts in Europe, a number of French, Danish, Swedish and UK government departments are actively using the platform,” Blundell said when asked about the platform’s adoption. (But he wouldn’t divulge revenue figures.) “Despite today’s turbulent macro environment, it was an opportune time for Gravity to hold its position of strength, and that further demonstrates the trust from our investors… We are committed to proving it. That Gravity is the most feature-packed open source API solution on the market and offers the robust scalability and features required by the most demanding enterprise customers.
Gravitee currently has 100 employees and plans to increase headcount by 20% by the end of the year.
