Merge API Inc., a startup that makes it easy for companies to integrate their software with third-party applications, today announced that it has raised $55 million in new funding.
The Series B funding round was led by Accel. New Enterprise Associates and Addition also participated.
Tech firms often integrate their software with third-party applications to improve the user experience for customers. A company with a software-as-a-service accounting tool, for example, can build an integration that makes it easy to sync transaction records with other financial applications. Often, companies offer not one but several integrations with external tools.
Linking a software product to a third-party service requires connecting to that third-party service’s API, or application programming interface. An API is a channel through which an application exchanges data with other systems. Connecting to an API can require a significant amount of custom code.
The more third-party services a company integrates into its software product, the more custom code it must create. Moreover, each integration with a third-party service must be updated as the service changes over time, creating additional complexity.
Merge has developed a cloud-based platform that makes the task easier. If a company wants to connect its software product to three third-party services, it typically needs to build three integrations, or one for each service API. With the Merge platform, it is possible to do the same task using only one API instead of three.
The startup platform works as an intermediary between an application and the third-party services with which the application is integrated. Requests can be sent to the Merge API instead of third-party services’ APIs. The result, the startup says, is a significant reduction in complexity that saves time for developers and speeds up software development.
Merge enables developers to build integrations for more than 150 applications, including popular cloud platforms such as Salesforce and ServiceNow. More than 3,000 companies use the startup’s platform to support their software projects. It detailed today on the occasion of its new round of funding that its annual recurring revenue rose by a factor of 26 over the past year, but did not disclose full sales figures.
“Our growth over the past year shows how much demand there is in the market for unified APIs that make it easy to build product integrations,” said Merge co-founder Shensi Ding.
The startup plans to use the proceeds from the funding round to hire more employees. Merge will expand its product development and go-to-market teams with the goal of growing its workforce to more than 100 employees over the next year.