Mashape, which provides an open-source application programming interface (API) marketplace for developers and engineers, announced today that it has closed an $18 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Mashape Kong, the startup’s core product, allows dev teams to distribute, monetize, manage, analyze, and consume APIs. “Mashape Kong is the air traffic control of the modern enterprise,” wrote Augusto Marietti, cofounder and CEO of Mashape, in an email to VentureBeat. “It manages and orchestrates the disparate array of APIs that make up modern microservices architectures.”
Marietti claims Kong has been downloaded more than 2 million times by thousands of companies. Customers use Kong for security, analytics, onboarding, monitoring, and access control, and pay a six-figure annual subscription for the service. Mashape claims to have 30 enterprise customers, including Rakuten.
Mashape views enterprise service bus (ESB) players like Tibco and API management companies like Apigee as competitors, along with companies that provide similar microservices used to build flexible, independently deployable software systems.
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“A big shift is happening in enterprise software,” wrote Marietti. “A few years ago, most companies were focusing on developing heavyweight monolithic applications. Today, applications are decoupled in smaller pieces built with APIs and open-source tools. New infrastructure tools like Kubernetes, Docker, or Kong are enabling this transition from monolithics to microservices.”
Index Ventures and CRV joined Andreessen in this round of funding, bringing Mashape’s total raised since it was founded in 2009 to $28 million. The new money will be used to develop additional engineering features and expand the service to larger companies.
Based in San Francisco, Mashape currently has 25 employees.
