American Express Ventures, the strategic investment vehicle for payment services firm American Express, yesterday took part in a $25m funding round for US-based application programming interface (API) integration platform Cloud Elements.
Mercato Partners led the round, which featured commitments from Access Ventures, Grotech Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, Rally Ventures and Upslope Ventures.
Found in 2012, Cloud Elements has created a platform that enables app developers and businesses to integrate APIs instead of building their own integration stack.
The platform provides APIs – building blocks to integrate existing features from a third-party tool into a software – from more than 170 services covering cloud storage, e-commerce, payments, scheduling, marketing, authentication and conferencing.
Mark Geene, chief executive and co-founder of Cloud Elements, said: “APIs are a great way to make software work together, but developers now have to deal with hundreds or thousands of APIs to automate basic business processes. Point-to-point integration cannot scale to address this challenge.
“We virtualise and simplify API integration to make all APIs work together, look the same and operate the same – using industry standard protocols.”
The round increased Cloud Elements’ overall funding to $46.2m. In 2017, the company collected $13m in a series B round that included Harbert Partners, Rally Ventures, Access Ventures and Grotech Ventures.
Cloud Elements previously obtained $3.1m in a series A round co-led by Grotech and Icon Venture Partners, with participation from Galvanize Ventures in 2014. It also secured $5m from 10 unnamed investors in 2015, according to a regulatory filing.