Boarding Pass
Lunar.dev raises $6 million in Seed for its API Consumption Management solution
Gartner researchers found a 94% adoption rate of third-party APIs - and the company is here to help manage them.
Lunar.dev has announced that it has raised $6 million in Seed led by Uncork Capital with the participation of existing investor Angular Ventures, among others. The Israeli company has developed a tool that will provide organizations with complete oversight and control over their API usage. Service providers like OpenAI, Twilio, and Stripe help developers add more capabilities to their applications, such as Generative AI, SMS verification, or payments. Gartner researchers found a 94% adoption rate of third-party APIs - and Lunar.devy is here to help manage them.
“APIs are the backbone of modern software — but they’re also its Achilles heel,” said Eyal Solomon, co-founder and CEO of Lunar.dev. “Increasingly, APIs are powering mission-critical capabilities and they’re now a growing origin of costs. However, there’s no good way for organizations to maintain visibility and control over all of the APIs they use. Too often organizations only discover that there’s an issue once they’ve been saddled with an enormous invoice at the end of a billing cycle, or find themselves in the midst of a production outage, scrambling to locate the developer who can apply a code fix.”
The open-source solution can be set up in a matter of minutes, providing a holistic view of all APIs that are in use, along with metrics for each one of them, making it easy to identify performance bottlenecks, production issues, or unexpected costs. “Software development is undergoing a massive transformation. In the era of Generative AI, APIs have evolved from playing a supporting role to now being at the very core of software applications,” said Roy Gabbay, co-founder and CTO.
Lunar.dev joined CTech for a special Boarding Pass interview where the founders shared their company’s story. You can learn more about the journey below.
Company Name: Lunar.dev
Sector: API Consumption Management
Product/Service description:
Lunar.dev created the first API consumption management solution, providing organizations with total oversight and control over their API usage. The open-source solution can be set up in a matter of minutes, providing a holistic view of all APIs that are in use, along with metrics for each one of them, making it easy to identify performance bottlenecks, production issues, or unexpected costs. Real-time mitigations, like API quota management, unified throttling policies, or caching, can be implemented in production with no code changes required.
Founder Bios:
Roy Gabbay, is the CTO and Co-Founder of Lunar.dev and a seasoned cyber security expert with over 10 years of hands-on experience as a cloud engineer and group manager at cyber security companies, including Check Point. His experience provided a unique outlook and expertise on API management, security, and usage issues. Gabbay holds a BSc in Computer Science from Ben Gurion University.
Eyal Solomon is the CEO and Co-Founder of Lunar.dev, a Cyber Security Engineer and product leader with over 10 years of experience in cyber tools, product management, and sales. Eyal built his career within the IDF’s elite intelligence 8200 unit, leading teams of developers and product managers. Eyal was also one of the early employees at a large-scale Cyber Company leading product and then sales efforts. Eyal holds a BSc in Computer Science from IDC.
Year of Founding: 2022
Last Investment Round: $6 million
Last Investment Stage: Seed
Date of Last Investment: February 2023
Total investment to date: $6 million
Investors (leading and all): The round was led by Uncork Capital (Andy McLoughlin) with the participation of existing investor Angular Ventures (Gil Dibner), DarkMode VC (Amir Shevat), OperAngels syndicate, and Angel Moshe Lichtman, a former Microsoft Corporate VP.
Current number of employees: 8
Open positions:
Senior Backend Engineer
Senior Frontend Engineer
DevRel
Website:
www.lunar.dev
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/lunardevapi
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lunar-api
How was the idea born?
The concept for Lunar.dev emerged from the founders' hands-on experience with API inefficiencies, particularly when Roy developed a caching solution for APIs at Check Point.
Realizing through discussions with various companies that these challenges were widespread, they identified a gap in the market for an external, scalable solution. Drawing on their cybersecurity expertise, they crafted a unique tool that optimizes API traffic in real time without the need for code alterations, filling this unmet need in the tech industry.
What is the need for the product?
The need for Lunar.dev's product is driven by the increasing reliance of modern tech companies on third-party APIs for their core functionalities. The widespread adoption of APIs, like OpenAI demonstrates the growing trend and need.
Increasing use of integrations has henceforth yielded increased cloud costs, performance scalability issues, and the burden of ongoing maintenance. This is exactly where Lunar.dev comes in.
Since there's a lack of a comprehensive solution to address these challenges, Lunar.dev aims to fill this void, positioning its product as an essential component of any company’s application management toolkit.
How is it changing the market?
Lunar.dev is set to revolutionize the API landscape by providing a solution that shifts the current paradigm to make API management continuous and simple. It’s not focused on the API providers or security but rather on API consumers. It’s designed to enable companies to scale without being constrained by limitations of external API usage.
Recognizing these APIs as critical resources akin to databases and other tech stack components, Lunar.dev addresses the market's void by offering a managed solution that is based on insights, and community know-how and is also open-source.
How big is the market for the product and who are its main customers?
The market for Lunar.dev's product is extensive, encompassing a diverse range of companies that depend on external APIs for their operations. Essentially, any business that leverages third-party APIs stands to gain from Lunar.dev's offerings.
Our main customers are companies relying on real-time data and APIs, such as HRTech and data analysis companies, or security companies - all of which consume API data feeds at scale or use critical external APIs on behalf of their customers.
Does the product exist already? If not - at what stage is it and when is it expected to hit the market?
Yes, Lunar.dev has an existing product and that’s currently used by design partners. The company is now launching an open beta and open-source offering, which enables developers to swiftly implement the solution and gain immediate insight and resolution capabilities for API bottlenecks.
Currently, Lunar.dev is focused on developing a managed SaaS offering that will further automate scaling and provide API usage recommendations and insights. This new service aims to build upon the open-source foundation by offering a more robust, hands-off experience for companies looking to enhance their API management capabilities.
Who are the main competitors in this sector and how big are they?
Lunar.dev is pioneering a new category, with its main challenge being to persuade companies to opt for their solution over in-house development. While there are API Gateways and API Management players like Kong and Apigee that provide some overlapping abilities, such as external API visibility, their services primarily support API providers and not the consumer. In contrast, Lunar.dev specializes in managing and optimizing the usage of third-party APIs minded to consumers, offering real-time management and control in production, thus carving out its own niche in the market.
What is the added value that the founders bring to the company and the product?
Both their cyber experience and practices, along with low-level understanding come into play when building a solution in a new technical approach.
On top of that, experiencing the problems they had solved in their previous roles, gives them an advantage and a deep understanding of the problem space they’re looking to solve
What will the money coming in from the round be used for?
This round’s funding will be utilized to double the team in upcoming months, and further develop Lunar.dev's solutions, foster their user community, and roll out the managed SaaS product to support a growing customer base at scale.
In the "Startup Boarding Pass" section, CTech will cover the (relatively) small investments made in companies during the early stages of their existence - and the entrepreneurs and startups who have not yet had the opportunity to reveal their stories to the world. Please use the linked form and fill it out according to the guidelines. This form is intended for startups raising between $500,000 and $3 million from venture capital funds, angels, or official grants from Israeli and foreign institutions. If relevant, someone at CTech will be in touch for follow-up questions.
