We’ve been tracking Import.io since it launched on our TechCrunch Disrupt Europe stage in Berlin in 2013, and they’ve come a long way. This startup, which effectively turns business web sites into data and APIs, raised a ‘seed-plus’ round of $4.5m back in 2014. But today it announces a significant upgrade, completing a $13 million Series A round of funding. It’s also actually named the big companies its working with now.
The round is led by London’s Imperial Innovations, with participation from Wellington Partners, Oxford Capital, Delin Capital and AME Cloud Ventures. This brings the total raised to date to $17.5 million.
Import.io hasn’t raised the round for nothing. It says its users have created over a million web APIs, and extracted data from over 5.5 billion web pages in 2015. The company will use the funds to further develop its data extraction platform and expand analytics and visualization partners.
The startup is tackling an age-old problem. Businesses rely on data these days but web sites are rarely built to display that data. “Web scrapers” and other solutions are not fit for purpose. Using the Import.io Builder, businesses can turn a Web site into an API, from which data can be extracted. Customers include the likes of Moz and Chegg, delivering data as a direct stream via its Magic API and in preferred formats like JSON.
It’s also now creating an ecosystem of data partners, with companies like Tableau and Interworks, Silk, and Blockspring currently using Import.io’s Magic API.
In a statement David White, founder and CEO at Import.io claims: “This new round of funding represents the biggest investment ever in web data extraction.”
By email he told me: “In 2015 we uncovered the business value of web data for customers and established a strong v1 of the sales and marketing funnel. User adoption was very strong, we saw record numbers in 2015 and we can show how our platform learns from the users: usage of the platform feeds into our algorithm and technology development.”
Will they now be moving to the US? “The company has had an office in San Francisco since 2013. Over the last year users and revenues from the US have grown significantly and the team in San Francisco office has grown to match that. I will balance my time between London and San Francisco as both teams continue to grow.”
David Axmark, founder of MySQL and an angel investor in Import.io says: “Import.io has developed a completely new way of extracting, processing, and delivering web data, solving an increasingly urgent need for data-driven businesses.”