From databases to conversational assistants, these 10 startups are leveraging the benefits of open-source technology to improve their products and promote adoption.
Over the last year, the open-source software industry has witnessed some of the largest acquisitions in its history. IBM’s $34B acquisition of Red Hat and Microsoft’s $7.5B acquisition of GitHub are two of the most notable deals.
According to CB Insights’ Industry Analyst Consensus market-sizing tool, the open-source services industry is set to exceed $17B in 2019, and to reach almost $33B by 2022 — nearly doubling in size.
As corporate interest in open-source software continues to grow, early-stage open-source startups will continue to attract backing from top investors.
Using CB Insights data, we’ve identified 10 notable early-stage (Seed or Series A) startups in the open-source software space. Startups on our list are building databases, security tools, monitoring platforms, and conversational assistants, among other solutions.
Definition
To be considered open-source, a program’s source code — the underlying code that makes up the design, functionality, and defining attributes of an application — must be publicly accessible. People with access to the source code can inspect, use, modify, and share it.
Open-source software varies in size and scope, depending on the purpose of the project and the number of contributing developers. A large-scale database project designed for the global enterprise may have thousands of contributing developers, while a small smart home automation project may only have a few.
We selected the below companies based on their Mosaic score — CB Insights’ algorithm that uses financial and non-financial signals to predict private company health — as well as the recency and size of their disclosed funding. They are listed in descending order of total disclosed funding.
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