Ambassador Labs Secures $18M in Growth Funding to Accelerate Ambassador and Telepresence Development

October 20, 2020 | 6 min read

BOSTON, Oct. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ambassador Labs (formerly known as Datawire), the company behind one of the most popular Kubernetes-native API gateway, Ambassador, today announced it has secured a Series B funding round of $18M led by global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. The funding will allow the company to accelerate investments in both open source and commercial software that optimizes workflows for Kubernetes environments.

Ambassador Labs’ product suite enables DevOps for Kubernetes. Kubernetes has changed the development workflow by breaking monolithic applications into a collection of interdependent microservices built by different product-focused development teams. Building applications from collections of microservices impacts how these applications are developed, tested, released, and put into production.

Edge Stack API Gateway is currently one of the most popular Kubernetes native gateway, a critical foundation component for this new change to DevOps. Open source and commercial success of the API Gateway has propelled Ambassador Labs to 100% year-over-year revenue growth, over 7,000 active installations, and numerous awards including being named 2020 Gold NPG IT World Award winner for best API Management solution and Stevie People’s Choice Stevie® Award winner for Favorite API Management solution.

The new funding will allow Ambassador Labs to continue to accelerate its go-to-market and deliver innovative solutions to customers, including:

API Management Innovation - With Kubernetes, APIs are no longer just for external consumption. All microservices contain APIs. The ubiquity of APIs in the development process impacts DevOps workflows. The additional funding will enable acceleration of Ambassador’s Developer Portal and other products designed to solve API Management issues.
Local Kubernetes Development and Contributions to the CNCF-Hosted Telepresence Project - As Kubernetes clusters have grown, engineering managers have seen cloud hosting costs skyrocket and team efficiency decrease due to the interconnected nature of microservice development and testing. Telepresence and Service Preview reduce development costs while increasing team efficiency.
Canadian Expansion – Ambassador Labs is increasing its presence in Canada and will look to expand the engineering team in Montreal to support investments in new product development.
DevOps Center of Excellence – Kubernetes’ impact on DevOps is long-reaching. The DevOps Center of Excellence will bring Ambassador Labs together with leading DevOps practitioners to develop best practices for DevOps in a Kubernetes environment.
Commitment to Growth Marketing – To build upon the explosive growth of the Ambassador open source community, the company will accelerate investments in growth marketing to gain better insights on the customer journey.

“As more and more organizations adopt Kubernetes to support modern app development, DevOps teams are realizing a change in the development and delivery workflows that they were previously accustomed to, shining light on the need for solutions that make it easy to understand, control and manage every aspect of the dev lifecycle,” said Richard Li, Founder and CEO at Ambassador Labs. “Our open source community of 10,000+ users and thousands of global customers reinforces the value Ambassador provides in API management across Kubernetes. This new funding will allow us to evolve even faster during a critical time in our company journey and make the necessary investments in technology to address our customers’ DevOps challenges today and in the future.”

“Ambassador Labs has continued to impress us with their approach to DevOps for Kubernetes management, a commitment to ongoing innovation, and a strong community traction in a growing marketspace,” said Philine Huizing, Vice President at Insight Partners, who will be joining the Ambassador Labs board. “API management across Kubernetes is a significant market opportunity where we envision future growth. It’s an exciting time for Ambassador Labs, and we’re thrilled to partner together to help take the company to new heights.”

About Ambassador Labs

Ambassador Labs (formerly known as Datawire) develops the most popular API gateway solution for Kubernetes. Built on the trusted Envoy Proxy, the Ambassador Edge Stack enables developers to own the services they deliver. Our customers code, test, and ship services at blistering fast rates compared to their competitors. This ease of installation, breadth of services, and support for full-cycle development have resulted in thousands of companies adopting Edge Stack API Gateway including Microsoft, PTC, Nvidia, and Ticketmaster.

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

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Lisa Williams

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