Vercel Raises $102M Series C Funding

Vercel Secures $102 Million in Series C Funding

Vercel, the organization responsible for the widely adopted Next.js React framework, has announced the completion of a $102 million Series C funding round. This investment was spearheaded by Bedrock Capital.

Existing investors, including Accel, CRV, Geodesic Capital, Greenoaks Capital, and GV, continued their support. Additionally, the round welcomed new investors such as 8VC, Flex Capital, GGV, Latacora, Salesforce Ventures, and Tiger Global.

To date, Vercel has raised a total of $163 million, resulting in a current company valuation of $1.1 billion.

Significant Growth Trajectory

Vercel has experienced substantial growth in recent months. Traffic across all websites and applications hosted on its network has doubled since October 2020.

The adoption of Next.js among the world’s top 10,000 websites has also increased, growing by 50% during the same period.

Image Credits: Vercel

Notable Customer Base

While Next.js is an open-source framework, not all users are direct Vercel customers. However, the company’s current clientele includes prominent organizations like Carhartt, Github, IBM, McDonald’s, and Uber.

Focus on Front-End Developers

“Our primary focus is the front-end developer,” stated Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch. “We aim to empower these developers, and their teams, to create exceptional and engaging web experiences for their users.”

Vercel’s approach involves building a serverless platform specifically designed for the Next.js framework. This allows developers to concentrate on front-end development without the complexities of scaling and performance management.

Addressing Limitations of Previous Solutions

Rauch contends that older solutions were often developed independently of modern cloud platforms and serverless technologies. This placed the burden of deployment and scaling on developers.

Furthermore, while some may find headless content management systems sufficient, Rauch believes that developers increasingly require the ability to create solutions that surpass standard, off-the-shelf offerings.

Enhanced Collaboration Through Preview URLs

A key feature that developers appreciate is Vercel’s capability to generate a preview URL for a site’s front end with each code edit. “This shifts the focus from extensive code review to experiencing the front end directly,” Rauch explained.

“This fosters a more collaborative environment, enabling designers, marketers, IT professionals, and even CEOs to contribute to the front-end development process and provide feedback, such as refining color palettes.”

Bedrock Capital’s Perspective

Geoff Lewis, founder and managing partner at Bedrock, commented, “Vercel is driving a significant shift in the market, with the majority of value creation in web and cloud application development occurring at the front end, where user experiences are crafted.”

He added, “We are excited to collaborate with Guillermo and his team to advance this revolution and are pleased to have co-led this funding round.”