MMC Ventures and Forward Partners have co-invested USD7 million in a Series A round for London-based data streaming startup Ably.
MMC Ventures invested from its GBP52 million MMC Greater London Fund, launched in May 2019, which forms part of the Mayor of London’s initiative – the Greater London Investment Fund.
The capital injection will be used to scale, as demand for real-time around the world escalates.
Ably provides cloud infrastructure and APIs that enable developers to deliver live experiences to their users. Large enterprises and high-growth tech companies choose Ably to offload the technical and operational burden required to deliver globally available real-time messaging services, Ably said in a statement.
Ably’s customers include SaaS vendor HubSpot, Lightspeed Systems and MobyMax in eLearning; BlueJeans the VOiP provider; two of the largest car manufacturers in the world for connected cars; and Tennis Australia, the exclusive online scoring and commentary provider for the Australian Open.
Software engineers Matthew O’Riordan and Dr Paddy Byers co-founded the company in 2013, and launched in 2016 following research and development.
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO & co-founder of Ably said: “This is a significant milestone for Ably, as it enables us to deliver on our mission – that is, to provide the real-time infrastructure needed by developers to deliver live experiences to their customers.
“The production of real-time data is rapidly expanding and consumer expectations of real-time experiences are growing ever more demanding, said Dan Bailey, principal at MMC Ventures. “Developers wanting to build real time products at scale have been poorly served by existing products that require compromises between scale, reliability and consistency,” he added.
In the past year Ably has added Gary Barnes as its chief commercial officer, formerly global head of sales at ThoughtWorks, to the team. Vinay Bhindi and Ben Gamble have also joined as finance and operations director and head of developer relations, respectively. Tom Hammond now leads on channels and partnerships.
