The newly created start -Open Source, which sets off to solve the problem of the API interface in Graphql The ecosystem secured the support of the e-commerce giant.
Wonderful chartAs the company is called, she said today that she raised $ 7.5 million in the series financing round for “scaling the Federation Graphql”.
Investors are a VC eBay arm ebay venturesIN Ventures foodAND Aspenwood ventures. In addition to investing in a startup, eBay also serves as a fundamental design partner, because Wundergraph decided to build an open source alternative to competing products from Graphql Company, Apollo.
“Our investment in the highly efficient Open Source Wundergraph platform will help increase the API ebay ecosystem and will allow our teams to be faster and smarter in building products that help our sellers develop,” said Bryan Woodruff, Vice President of EBAY Seller Vice President.
Founded in 2020, Wundergraph is the work of CTO Dustin GodCEO Jens noseCOO Björn Schwenzerand CCO Stefan Avram (In the photo above, from left to right).
While three of the company’s founding quartet are based in Germany, the company has been registered in the United States from the very starting. Avram based in Miami joined the ranks in 2022
There is an API interface for this
Graphql, for the uninitiated, is the language of knowledge query for API interfaces (application programming interfaces), which was developed on the meta (then Facebook) in 2012 as a part of the transition from online packaging to native mobile applications. Business Open Graphql in 2015And later he moved the project to his own namesake foundation under the patronage of the Linux Foundation.
Simply put, Graphql allows customers (i.e. applications) to demand accurate data that they need as a substitute of excessive abandonment of knowledge, which increases the use of bandwidth and costs or insufficient download, which can require many demands to obtain all required data. This makes it more efficient compared to traditional API REST interfaces.
To put it more, Graphql supports the economy of the API, because the software attracts microfous-application-application combined with built components that are easier to maintain than the code monoliths. But as the application increases and the variety of API interfaces can create a bulky mess that is difficult to organize on a large scale.
Wundergraph has undergone several iterations for years. Initially, he built a software programming set (SDK) to allow programmers to unify many API interfaces, including Graphql, REST, SOAP and databases similar to MySQL. Fast forward until 2023, and the company raised A round of seeds $ 3 million To power the API revolution by building the so -called “github for the API” – a platform for people to cooperate, sharing and exploring the API interfaces.
Meanwhile, Apollo has collected a huge sum of money fueled Graphql federation Efforts, which involves helping many teams at work and building charts in larger applications as a part of dispersed architecture. However, at the end of the tail 2021 Apollo has also modified its federal product from MIT Open Source license for its own elastic license “Available source”.
It was here that Wundergraph saw his opportunity to rush.
“In the summer of 2023, this became difficult because we did not receive the necessary offers, and the whole operation did not go in the direction in which we want it,” said Neuse Techcrunch.
When the founders tried to reverse, they looked at the various sales notes and noticed that customers still mentioned the change in the Apollo license.
“Our data has shown that some people are really looking for open source alternative to the Apollo federation,” said Neuse. “We came to the conclusion that our current approach is not working, so we simply issue an open source alternative to the Apollo federation.”
So at the end of 2023 Wundergraph Cosmo debuted For this clear purpose.
EBay coefficient
As with any Open Source project managed by the supplier, Wundergraph is the fundamental guardian and collaborator of Open Source effort. In addition to COSSO, the company sells hosting and support and premium services, which can include help in the integration of databases, analytics, authentication and remark.
Larger corporations can, after all, build their very own version of COSSO. But if the fundamental goal of the company is, say, building the e-commerce market, he would probably prefer not to develop and maintain every aspect of his stack-Cosso would use it and pay Wundergraph for support supported by solid contracts at the service level (SLA).
At this point, Wundergraph’s partnership from ebay turned out to be fruitful. Basically, it is a two -way process in which EBAY obtains the federation of the Fraphql Open Source Federation, which meets its needs, and Wundergraph receives the input details of a direct project from the global juggernaut.
“I would say that we are experts from the federation, but we have no experience in eBay problems,” Neuse explained. “And so, having this very close relationship, they taught us everything as we need to build our product so that it can be integrated with companies such as eBay, because they have very specific requirements.”
Such requirements may include the integration of the company’s own systems and tools from COSSO, for example, if you simply want to use a part of the product. This also convinced Neuse and Team that Open Source is a way if they wanted to attract famous customers who do not want to be locked in a reserved product.
“They [eBay] It really helped us transform Cosmo into a product that can be used by every large enterprise, because the reserved alternatives are trying to move you into a garden ecosystem surrounded by a wall, “Neuse said. “This market must be as wide as possible. How can we attract everyone? It must be open source. We cannot limit the way people use it.”
Thanks to the latest 7.5 million dollars at Bank, Wundergraph claims that it plans to develop an existing 20-person working force and double the Federation of Graphql Open Source with additional tools that help more intelligent-haired teams at work is higher support for cooperation and management for larger enterprises.
“Open Source is the future of API management, and enterprises require transparency, flexibility and control,” said co-founder Stefan Avram. “We are building the necessary hydraulic installation for the largest platforms in the world, and this financing allows us to scale, while maintaining our involvement in the development of open source.”