Fabric, a US-based e-commerce software provider, has received $140m in a series C round led by internet and telecommunications group SoftBank at a valuation of about $1.5bn.
Stripes, Forerunner Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Glynn Capital filled out the participants, helping lift the company to unicorn status.
Fabric provides headless commerce services, which decouple the frontend from the backend of e-commerce applications to offer more multichannel experiences through a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs). It claims to have achieved year-on-year revenue growth of 4.5-times in 2021.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the round to boost its geographical expansion and its product development for automation and intelligence technology.
Robert Kaplan, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, the corporate’s subsidiary that manages its Vision Funds, is set to join Fabric’s board of directors in conjunction with the round.
As e-commerce sales exploded throughout the pandemic, the focus has shifted even more sharply to the digital shopping experience. Traditional e-commerce platforms, which do not decouple the frontend from the backend, are typically unable to change much on the customer-facing interface without also changing the backend, which includes elements such as the inventory management system, payment gateway, accounting system, customer management and checkout process. This puts a limit on how much creative control developers can have and makes simple changes to the interface time-consuming for developers.
Headless commerce software has consequently increased in popularity to give online shopping more agile and give retailers more options by providing an API layer between the frontend and backend that allow a brand-consistent experience across multiple platforms.
Fellow US-based headless commerce services provider Nacelle secured $50m in series B funding from Tiger Global Management in August last year, while Germany-based e-commerce software provider Commercetools raised $140m in a series C round backed by retail and tourism company Rewe Group the following month.
Faisal Masud, Fabric’s chief executive, said: “We truly appreciate the vote of confidence that Softbank and our other world-class investors have in our vision, our execution and our experienced team.
“This round will allow us to increase the velocity of our innovation and product development while we continue to create technology that, unlike our competitors, bends to the needs of our customers, not the other way around. Fabric truly is the future of digital commerce and our new customers Chico’s, McDonald’s, TriMark, L’azurde and most recently The Honest Company, are embracing it.”
The latest round comes less than a year after Fabric raised $100m in a series B round led by Stripes in July 2021, which saw participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft, B Capital Group and Sierra Ventures.
Norwest had previously led a $43m series A round in February last year with backing from Sierra Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, both of which had backed a $9.5m seed round for Fabric alongside Expa in late 2020.
