Embrace
YC S19Los Angeles, US · Founded 2016 · 62 employees · Hiring · 22 known investors
Embrace is a user-focused observability platform built on OpenTelemetry that provides real user monitoring (RUM) for mobile and web applications. It helps engineering and reliability teams understand end-user experience and performance issues to improve digital products.
Also known as Embrace Mobile Inc.
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S19)
Embrace was founded in 2016 by Eric Futoran and Fredric Newberg.
Investors · 22
Also in the syndicate · 9
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountSeries BJun 2026Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
The YC application· Summer 2019 batch
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Embrace is an observability company that provides real user monitoring (RUM) for mobile and web applications, positioning its platform around end-user experience rather than server-side signals alone. Its mobile RUM product captures 100% of user sessions with automatic instrumentation for crashes, application-not-responding (ANR) events, network requests and performance metrics, and includes crash reporting with user context, ANR detection starting at one second, session replay and user timelines, real-time alerting, custom dashboards, and SDK support for iOS, Android, React Native, Unity and Flutter. Its web RUM product monitors Core Web Vitals with session context, JavaScript errors, user session timelines, custom metrics and business KPIs, and cross-platform user journey correlation.
The platform is built on OpenTelemetry and is designed to connect frontend telemetry with backend systems, with integrations into observability backends including Chronosphere, Honeycomb, Grafana and Datadog. The company describes itself as the only frontend-focused vendor in the CNCF and emphasizes open standards, data ownership and avoidance of vendor lock-in. Earlier in its history the company described itself as an observability and data platform built exclusively for mobile, with products including Observability, Resolution and Data Intelligence, the last aimed at making mobile session data usable by BI and data science teams.
Embrace was founded in 2016 and is based in Los Angeles (Culver City), California. It participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch and the YC Growth program (YCG F21).
Founding story
Embrace was founded in 2016 by Eric Futoran, chief executive, Fredric Newberg, chief technology officer, and Maggie Shih, its former chief operating officer. Futoran was previously a founder of the mobile games publisher Scopely and built a data management platform at Aggregate Knowledge.
Business model
Embrace sells a software-as-a-service observability platform to engineering organizations, with demo-request-driven enterprise sales. Customers instrument mobile and web applications with Embrace SDKs and consume the resulting telemetry in Embrace's dashboards or forward it into third-party observability backends.
Recurring software subscriptions sold to enterprise and mobile-native engineering teams; the company has cited quarterly logo retention of 93% and year-over-year customer base growth as commercial indicators.
Traction
Embrace reported working with more than 100 organizations worldwide at the time of its 2021 Series B, and 130% year-over-year customer base growth with 93% quarterly logo retention in 2023. Named customers across sources include Discover, Marriott, The New York Times, Yum Brands (Taco Bell), Yahoo!, Hyatt, GOAT, Cameo, Hatch, Ibotta, Wildlife Games, Depop, Dave, ChowNow, Glo, Apprentice, TextNow, Warby Parker, Masterclass and Home Depot.
Latest developments
Recent announcements include the acquisition of SpeedCurve, general availability of the Embrace MCP Server following a beta, natural language filtering in the Embrace dashboard, the acceptance of Embrace's Kotlin implementation and SDK donation to OpenTelemetry, and Network Spans Forwarding for connecting client-side network requests to backend observability platforms.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Embrace competes with legacy application performance monitoring and error-logging vendors, arguing that those tools drop large portions of mobile session data and are built for operations rather than mobile and frontend engineers. It differentiates by focusing exclusively on user-facing frontend telemetry while remaining interoperable with backend observability platforms through OpenTelemetry. Investors have compared it to data-platform companies such as Databricks, Tableau and DataRobot.
Collection of 100% of sessions from 100% of users rather than sampled data, mobile-specific depth such as ANR detection from one second and session timelines, an OpenTelemetry-native architecture that allows data to be exported to other platforms, and a stated position as the only frontend-focused vendor in the CNCF.
Technology
The platform is built on OpenTelemetry, with automatic instrumentation SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Unity and Flutter, plus web instrumentation for Core Web Vitals and JavaScript errors. Capabilities include session timelines, performance traces, network span forwarding to backend observability platforms, custom dashboards and alerting. Embrace has donated its Kotlin implementation and SDK to OpenTelemetry, and has shipped AI-oriented features including an MCP server and natural language filtering in its dashboard.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales supported by demo requests, customer case studies, research reports and open-source community participation via OpenTelemetry and the CNCF; the company has hired across go-to-market functions for enterprise accounts and recruits business development and enterprise account executive roles remotely in the United States.
Mobile engineers, web and frontend developers, and site reliability/DevOps teams at enterprises and mobile-native businesses, spanning e-commerce, hospitality, media, gaming, IoT, e-learning, workforce productivity, financial services and healthcare.
Geography
Headquartered in Los Angeles (Culver City), California, with remote roles across the United States and customers described as organizations around the world.
History
Founded in 2016 in Culver City, California, Embrace joined Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch and raised a funding round in 2019. In October 2021 it raised a $45 million Series B led by NEA alongside the launch of its Data Intelligence product, bringing reported total funding to $57 million. In July 2023 it announced an inside upround of more than $20 million in growth financing led by NEA and expanded its leadership with a head of product, VP of R&D and a new board member. The company subsequently broadened from mobile-only monitoring to user-focused observability across mobile and web, contributed its Kotlin implementation and SDK to OpenTelemetry, and acquired the web performance monitoring company SpeedCurve.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — 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 — not independently audited.
Competitors · 8
by search overlap
Companies competing with Embrace for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 8
launches, deals, and filingsEmbrace announced the acquisition of SpeedCurve, expanding its user-focused observability platform.
Embrace announced that its donation of its Kotlin implementation and SDK to OpenTelemetry was accepted.
Embrace made its MCP Server generally available following a beta launch roughly a month earlier, allowing customers to incorporate Embrace data into AI workflows.
Embrace introduced natural language filtering in its dashboard, allowing users to query data without manually building filters.
Embrace announced an inside upround of $20 million in growth financing led by NEA with participation from Greycroft, AV8 (Allianz) and Eniac.
$20M source ↗
Embrace added Andrew Tunall as VP & Head of Product (previously VP Product at New Relic), Anuj Jaiswal as VP of R&D (previously VMware via the Arkin acquisition), and Dan Wright (former COO of AppDynamics and CEO of DataRobot) to its board of directors.
Embrace announced a $45 million Series B led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Greycroft, AV8, Eniac and founders from PagerDuty, Sendbird, LogDNA, Scopely and TestFlight, bringing total funding to $57 million.
$45M source ↗
Alongside its Series B, Embrace launched Data Intelligence, a product intended to make mobile data accessible and actionable for BI and data science teams.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Embraceembrace.io · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Embrace do?
- Embrace is a user-focused observability and real user monitoring platform for mobile and web apps, built on OpenTelemetry.
- Who founded Embrace?
- Embrace was founded by Eric Futoran, Fredric Newberg in 2016.
- Who are Embrace's investors?
- Embrace's investors include Y Combinator, AV8 Ventures, Baroda Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, Duke Capital Partners, Eniac Ventures, Fjor Founders, Greycroft and 5 more.
- Where is Embrace headquartered?
- Embrace is headquartered in Los Angeles, US.