London-based API provider Pusher has secured $8m (£5.73m) in Series A funding in a round led by Balderton Capital and with participation from Heavybit.
Pusher provides coded software that makes it easier for developers to build interactive features, such as scalable in-app notifications, chat, real-time graphs and geo-tracking within apps.
The intention is to give users a live experience without having to manually refresh an app, be that a chat app, a game or a trading service.
The company was founded by Max Williams back in 2011. Williams explains the company’s origins: “Pusher came into being because as developers we ran into problems that required realtime infrastructure. We soon realised that others had the same problem
“Application developers are such a vital part of the modern economy. We love providing APIs that allow them to do more and spend their time building amazing products.”
Williams went on to say that the majority of their customers are in the US and this investment will allow them to open an office in California.
The company currently employs 60 people, and by the end of 2018 it hopes to have up to 30 people working in the new US office.
Pusher also claims that more than 200,000 developers worldwide use its products and more than 40 billion messages per day are now sent using its APIs.
Examples include; The New York Times using Pusher for updating its news feeds, Mailchimp for internal collaboration tools, Intercom for chat and DraftKings for updating its leaderboards.
James Wise, partner at Balderton Capital, commented on the investment: “We love that they have been growing organically for a long time by building a hugely admired developer-focused culture, and we hope with this capital they’ll be able to serve that market even better”.
Back in 2016, Pusher received $2.5m in funding from alternative growth capital provider SaaS Capital. This latest funding will also be used to market the company, to continue its R&D efforts and develop its products.
Once such product is Chatkit, which helps developers build chat into their applications, and is the first in a new line of products to be released in 2018.
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