PubNub Valuation, Funding & Investors
PubNub is valued at $220M as of April 2019.
Last PubNub valuation
$220M
Series D · Apr 2019
Last PubNub funding round
$65M
Series E · Nov 2021
Cumulative funding PubNub raised
$130M
across 5 funding rounds
Key investors in PubNub
Scale Venture Partners
Sapphire Ventures
Relay Ventures
Cisco Investments
Bosch Ventures
TiE Angels
About PubNub
PubNub is a San Francisco-headquartered infrastructure provider offering a global Data Stream Network for real-time applications and IoT devices. It supports over 70 SDKs across platforms with 250-millisecond worldwide latency and scales to hundreds of millions of concurrent connections. PubNub powers chat, live streaming, and telemetry in apps used by enterprises like Adobe and Under Armour. Established in 2013, its cloud-based API handles billions of messages daily across 200 countries without managing servers.
Founded
2010
HQ
San Francisco, CAWebsite
Status
Privately held
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Usage-based, Subscription
Valuation
$220M (Apr 2019)
PubNub Valuation
PubNub is currently valued at $220M, based on its Series D in April 2019.
The $23M round included Ericsson, Relay Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and 2 other investors.
PubNub valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 2019 | Series D | $220M |
PubNub Funding History
PubNub has raised a total of $130M across 5 funding rounds.
PubNub's first fundraising round was a $11M Series B in September 2013. The most recent completed round was a $65M Series E in November 2021.
PubNub funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2021 | Series E | The Raine Group (lead); HPE Growth; Scale Venture Partners; Bosch Ventures; Sapphire Ventures | $65M | - | PubNub is a real-time communication platform and infrastructure-as-a-service company founded in 2010, providing APIs and developer tools for building real-time connected experiences across web, mobile, and IoT applications. The platform powers messaging, presence, data streaming, and control capabilities for applications and serves major customers including Adobe, RingCentral, and DocuSign across more than 70 countries, connecting 600 million monthly devices. In November 2021, PubNub closed a $65 million Series E funding round led by The Raine Group, with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, HPE, and Bosch. The company did not disclose its post-money valuation for this round, though sources indicate it was significantly higher than the $220 million valuation from its April 2019 Series D. PubNub reported strong growth metrics at the time, including 200% year-over-year growth in customer bookings in 2021. The capital was intended for expanding platform functionality, geographic expansion including a new Asia Pacific office in Singapore, and continued team growth to capture increasing demand across use cases such as virtual events, enterprise collaboration, chat, gaming, and smart home applications. |
| Apr 2019 | Series D | Ericsson; Relay Ventures; Scale Venture Partners; Cisco Investments; Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Sapphire Ventures; Bosch | $23M | $220M | PubNub is a real-time data streaming platform that provides APIs to power messaging, presence updates, and data synchronization for apps and digital businesses. The platform enables developers to build connected experiences across consumer and enterprise applications including live chat, rideshare, delivery, collaboration tools, and gaming. PubNub's infrastructure processes massive data volumes—the company handled 1.3 trillion messages monthly as of 2019, more than twice global SMS traffic. In April 2019, PubNub closed a Series D funding round of $23 million, valuing the company at $220 million post-money. The round included participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures and Scale Venture Partners, along with new strategic investor Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), bringing total funding to approximately $70 million at that time. The capital was designated to accelerate international growth, capitalize on emerging market demand for real-time technologies, and open multiple sales and R&D offices globally throughout 2019. By the time of its Series E round in November 2021, PubNub had achieved strong traction with customer bookings growing 200% year-over-year in 2021, and the company boasted a customer base including Adobe, RingCentral, DocuSign, and thousands of others connecting 600 million monthly devices across over 70 countries. |
| Sep 2016 | Series A | Cisco Investments (lead); Ericsson (lead) | $6M | - | PubNub is a real-time communication platform and infrastructure-as-a-service company based in San Francisco that provides APIs for publish-subscribe messaging, enabling developers to build real-time web, mobile, and IoT applications. The platform powers features like messaging, geotracking, IoT device control, data visualizations, and live audience participation. In September 2016, PubNub raised $6 million in a venture round led by Cisco Investments and Ericsson to further develop real-time data streaming capabilities. This round followed prior funding including a $25 million Series C in 2015 led by Sapphire Ventures and a $10.6 million Series B in 2013 led by Scale Venture Partners. The 2016 investment brought strategic partners in networking and communication technologies to support PubNub's global data stream network. PubNub continued growth with a $23 million Series D in April 2019 from investors including HPE, Cisco Investments, Ericsson, and Robert Bosch, bringing total funding to $70 million at that point, and a $65 million Series E in November 2021 led by The Raine Group. |
| Sep 2015 | Series C | Sapphire Ventures (lead); Envision Ventures; Sound Ventures; Clearvision Ventures; Relay Ventures; Scale Venture Partners; Bosch Ventures; TiE Angels | $25M | - | PubNub is a San Francisco-based communications platform and Data Stream Network enabling real-time connectivity for mobile apps, web applications, and IoT devices across global infrastructure. Founded in 2010, it supports connections for diverse use cases including home automation, financial trading, connected cars, dating apps, and billboards, powering thousands of developers and averaging 20 million real-time transactions per minute across 200 million devices by mid-2015. In September 2015, PubNub completed a Series C funding round totaling $25 million, led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from new investors Bosch Ventures (RBVC), Sound Ventures, Envision Ventures, Clearvision Ventures, and existing investors Relay Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and TiE Angels. This followed an initial $20 million tranche announced in July 2015, also led by Sapphire Ventures with Relay and Scale, bringing total funding to over $35 million. Prior rounds included a $4.5 million Series A in 2012 led by Relay Ventures and a $10.6-11 million Series B in 2013 led by Scale Venture Partners. The funding aimed to accelerate global growth, particularly in industrial IoT, clean energy, and social collaboration applications, while expanding sales, marketing, product development, infrastructure, and market reach. CEO Todd Greene highlighted the IoT growth and real-time interaction demand, targeting connections for every device in under 0.25 seconds. Investors like Sapphire Ventures cited PubNub's remarkable usage growth and paradigm shift to data in motion. PubNub served high-profile clients like McDonald’s, CBS, and Yahoo, with Sapphire Ventures emphasizing strong customer feedback and scalability for app-to-app and IoT communications. The round positioned PubNub for exponential growth amid rising mobile, web, and IoT demands. |
| Sep 2013 | Series B | Scale Venture Partners (lead); Relay Ventures; Streamlined; TiE Angels | $11M | - | PubNub raised $11 million in its Series B funding round on September 17, 2013, led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Relay Ventures and TiE Angels. The funding brought total capital raised to $15.5 million. PubNub provides APIs for developers to implement real-time messaging and social services in apps and websites. |
Who has invested in PubNub?
15 investors have backed PubNub across its funding rounds, including Scale Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Relay Ventures, Cisco Investments, Bosch Ventures and TiE Angels.
Lead investors include The Raine Group, Cisco Investments, Ericsson, Sapphire Ventures and Scale Venture Partners.
PubNub Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 4 | Lead | Sep 2013 | |
 Toronto | 3 | Participant | Sep 2013 | |
| Austin, TX | 3 | Lead | Sep 2015 | |
 Stockholm | 2 | Lead | Sep 2016 | |
 Germany | 2 | Participant | Sep 2015 | |
| United States | 2 | Lead | Sep 2016 | |
| San Jose, CA | 2 | Participant | Sep 2013 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 1 | Participant | Sep 2015 | |
| Los Angeles, CA | 1 | Participant | Sep 2015 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 1 | Participant | Sep 2015 | |
 Amsterdam | 1 | Participant | Nov 2021 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 1 | Participant | Sep 2013 | |
| New York City, NY | 1 | Lead | Nov 2021 | |
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 15 PubNub investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
Benchmark 350K+ Funding Rounds and Disclosed VC Valuation Multiples
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Start Free TrialPubNub Competitors
PubNub competitors include listed companies like Fixstars and CE Info Systems, and private ones like Xreacloud, RootCloud, Moralis and Coder.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Xuzhou | Private | - | - | $215M | - | |
| Guangzhou | Private | - | - | $275M | - | |
| Stockholm | Private | - | - | $215M | - | |
| Austin, TX | Private | - | - | $210M | - | |
 Japan | Publicly listed | $62M | $18M | $456M | 5.9x | |
 India | Publicly listed | $49M | $20M | $508M | 8.7x |
PubNub Public Comps
PubNub is still privately-owned, but its public comps include Smart Eye, Nelco, Shandong Cvicse, Gefran, Beeks Group, QumulusAI, Zumtobel, FreeBit, TerraSky and Immersion.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $41M | $495K | 5.9x | 4.4x | 494.2x | 25.5x | |||
| $32M | $3M | 7.4x | - | 78.7x | - | |||
| $22M | ($2M) | 8.0x | - | (112.8x) | - | |||
| $159M | $25M | 1.1x | 1.1x | 7.0x | 6.7x | |||
| $49M | $15M | 4.2x | 3.7x | 13.7x | 9.6x | |||
| $13M | $3M | 27.0x | - | 122.7x | - | |||
| $1.2B | $90M | 0.3x | 0.3x | 4.1x | 3.5x | |||
| $354M | $38M | 0.7x | 0.7x | 6.8x | 5.9x | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all PubNub competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about PubNub
| When was PubNub founded? | PubNub was founded in 2010. |
| Where is PubNub headquartered? | PubNub is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States. |
| Is PubNub publicly listed? | No, PubNub is a private, VC-backed company. |
| What is PubNub's valuation? | PubNub was last valued at $220M in its Series D in April 2019. |
| How much funding has PubNub raised? | PubNub has raised $130M across 5 funding rounds. |
| What was PubNub's last funding round? | PubNub's last funding round was a $65M Series E in November 2021, led by The Raine Group. |
| Who are PubNub's investors? | PubNub's investors include Scale Venture Partners, Relay Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Ericsson, Bosch Ventures, Cisco Investments, TiE Angels, Envision Ventures, Sound Ventures, Clearvision Ventures and 5 others. |
| Which companies are comparable to PubNub? | Companies comparable to PubNub include Xreacloud, RootCloud, Moralis, Coder, Fixstars and CE Info Systems. |
See companies similar to PubNub
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