Ably
Founded 2016 Β· 116 employees on LinkedIn Β· 8 known investors
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Ably provides a globally distributed realtime messaging platform with low-latency transport and higher-level products for pub/sub, chat, state sync, and collaboration, integrated via developer APIs and SDKs. It serves developers and enterprises building realtime and AI-driven applications at scale.
Also known as Ably Realtime Β· ably.com Β· ably.io
Founders & leadership
Ably was founded in 2016 by Matthew O'Riordan and Paddy Byers.
Investors Β· 8
Also in the syndicate Β· 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$70M disclosed across 1 of 4 rounds Β· 2017β2021
- $70MSeries BJun 2021 Β· 2 sources
Dawn Capital (lead), Dawn Capital LLP (lead), Insight Partners (lead), Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, MMC, Triple Point
Source β
Source: company announcements and press reports β follow each round's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Ably is a realtime infrastructure provider that supplies developers with APIs and SDKs for delivering live data and durable sessions to applications and AI agents. Its product set spans Pub/Sub (low-level realtime messaging APIs with message guarantees), Chat (chat features designed for large concurrent user loads), AI Transport (realtime continuity for agentic sessions), LiveObjects (application-state synchronisation across users and devices), Spaces (collaborative environments such as avatar stacks and live cursors) and LiveSync (propagating database changes to frontend clients).
The platform is delivered over a distributed edge network described as spanning 700+ points of presence and 11 globally distributed regions, serving more than 2 billion devices per month across 80 countries, over 30 billion monthly connections and more than 2 trillion API operations per month, with a stated 6.5ms message delivery latency, a 99.999% uptime SLA and 99.999999% message survivability. Ably publishes client library SDKs for JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Python, Java/Android, .NET/C#, Ruby, Flutter/Dart, Objective-C, Swift, PHP and Go, mostly under the Apache-2.0 licence on GitHub, alongside a features specification, a CLI, a Terraform provider and an Ably-compatible single-binary server.
Pre-built integrations connect Ably to serverless compute (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, Cloudflare Workers), queues and streaming systems (AMQP, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon SQS, Kafka, Apache Pulsar), automation tools (IFTTT, Zapier), databases (MongoDB and PostgreSQL via LiveSync connectors), observability tools such as Datadog, and infrastructure-as-code via Terraform.
Founding story
Co-founders Matthew O'Riordan (CEO) and Dr. Paddy Byers (CTO) built Ably on the premise that realtime would become foundational infrastructure rather than a product feature, because before 2016 no available realtime infrastructure offered adequate performance guarantees at scale without compromising data integrity or reliability. The company states its founders invested more than 50,000 hours of research and development architecting the globally distributed platform around four pillars of dependability before launch. O'Riordan has been a software engineer for over 20 years and previously started and exited two technology businesses; Byers has over 25 years of experience leading software teams in realtime, embedded and mobile products for safety- and security-critical applications, and holds a Mathematics degree from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in theoretical computer science.
Business model
Ably sells access to its hosted realtime platform to developers and enterprises, with self-service free entry ("start building free") and paid plans. Usage-based pricing is offered with per-minute billing or monthly-active-user options, volume discounts as consumption rises, and cost-optimization platform features. An enterprise tier adds 24x7 premium support and incident management, a HIPAA BAA, SOC II compliance, a 99.999% uptime SLA, CNAME support, limitless capacity, firehose integrations, dedicated clusters, SSO and SCIM provisioning, architectural guidance, US/EU data routing, and enterprise observability and analytics.
Consumption-based subscription revenue from platform usage, billed per minute or per monthly active user with volume discounts, plus enterprise plans with additional support and compliance features; the service is also distributed through AWS Marketplace.
Traction
The company reports serving more than 2 billion devices per month across 80 countries, over 30 billion monthly connections and more than 2 trillion API operations per month, with 6.5ms message delivery latency and a multi-year record of 100% uptime. Customers cited include HubSpot, NASCAR and Webflow; network telemetry data also associates dedicated Ably hostnames with Expedia, HubSpot, Lightspeed, OfferUp, Front, Guardian and PeopleFun endpoints. Its GitHub organisation hosts 123 public repositories, with the JavaScript SDK at 364 stars.
Latest developments
Recent releases center on AI and agentic workloads: Ably AI Transport provides drop-in realtime continuity and durable sessions for agent-based applications, with an AI Transport JavaScript SDK that added a Temporal plugin for durable agent execution and support for Vercel AI SDK v7. The Pub/Sub JavaScript SDK extended end-to-end encryption to annotation data payloads, and the company signalled a forthcoming change to wildcard capability semantics for resource permissions. LiveObjects (realtime state sync) moved through beta and Chat gained a UI kit, AI moderation integrations and message editing and deletion.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Ably positions itself as a realtime experience platform operating within explicit performance and reliability guarantees, and states it powers more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform, serving over 2 billion devices monthly. It cites 100% uptime over a multi-year period, a 99.999% SLA and G2 user feedback as differentiators.
Stated differentiators are transparent, contractual guarantees around latency, uptime and message survivability; a multi-region edge network with multi-CDN fallbacks; a unified product suite (pub/sub, chat, collaboration, state sync, AI transport) built on shared infrastructure rather than separate stacks; broad, openly developed SDK coverage across languages and frameworks; and enterprise compliance features including SOC II, HIPAA BAA and US/EU data routing.
Technology
A globally distributed edge network of 700+ points of presence across 11 regions carries pub/sub messaging over WebSockets and other protocols, with historical support added for MQTT and Server-Sent Events. The architecture is organised around four "pillars of dependability" β performance (predictable latency), reliability (regional and global redundancy), scale (elastic, high-concurrency connection handling) and network reach. Higher-level capabilities include durable sessions, message annotations with end-to-end encryption, message editing and deletion, presence and state synchronisation primitives, and connectors that stream database changes to clients. Client SDKs aim to present a consistent, idiomatic API across platforms and are developed in the open against a published features specification.
Go-to-market
Developer-led adoption via a free self-service tier, extensive public documentation, open-source SDKs and a CLI, examples and changelog, complemented by enterprise sales with premium support, architectural guidance and compliance commitments, industry-specific solution pages and customer stories, plus distribution through AWS Marketplace and integrations with widely used cloud and data platforms.
Developers and product engineering teams, and enterprises running business-critical realtime applications. Named users include HubSpot, NASCAR and Webflow. Vertical solutions are marketed for fan engagement, CXTech (customer experience and support), HealthTech (including HIPAA-compliant telehealth and patient monitoring), FinTech (price feeds, trade confirmations, portfolio updates, AI financial co-pilots) and EdTech (live quizzes, shared workspaces, AI tutoring).
Geography
Infrastructure spans 11 globally distributed regions and 700+ points of presence, serving devices in more than 80 countries, with options for US/EU data routing for enterprise customers.
History
Ably launched in 2016 with multi-protocol interoperability and its first data-stream integrations. It added a unified cross-platform push notification API and serverless function integrations in 2017, MQTT support in 2018, Server-Sent Events in 2019, and Zapier and Cloudflare Workers integrations plus an AWS Marketplace partnership in 2020. A Flutter plugin and Control API followed in 2021, a Kafka Connector and message interactions in 2022, and Spaces, Datadog integration, subscription filters, a Python Realtime SDK, Kafka Connector 3.0 and React Hooks in 2023. In 2024 the company shipped LiveSync (alpha, then GA with MongoDB and PostgreSQL connectors) and Ably Chat with React, iOS and Android SDKs. In 2025 it released annotations in Pub/Sub, a LiveObjects beta, Chat SDK 1.0 with message editing/deletion, AI moderation integrations and a UI kit, and Ably AI Transport. Funding progressed from a $1M seed in May 2017 to a $7M Series A in April 2020 and a $70M Series B in June 2021, totalling $78 million.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Founder mafia
3 people who came through Ably went on to found or lead other companies.
Timeline Β· 13
launches, deals, and filingsRelease introduces a Temporal plugin for running durable agents without hand-written run lifecycles, plus support for Vercel AI SDK v7.
Ably became interoperable across multiple protocols and launched its first integrations for device-to-server data streams into event-driven architectures.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Ablyably.io Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Ably do?
- Ably operates a globally distributed realtime experience platform with pub/sub, chat, state sync and AI transport APIs.
- Who founded Ably?
- Ably was founded by Matthew O'Riordan, Paddy Byers in 2016.
- Who are Ably's investors?
- Ably's investors include Dawn Capital, Forward Partners, Insight Partners, Digital Horizon, Digital Horizon VC, MMC Ventures.
- How much funding has Ably raised?
- Ably has disclosed $70M raised across 1 of its 4 known rounds.