Highlights:

  • Supabase provides many of the essential features developers need to begin building applications, with its primary offering centered around a Postgres database.
  • Copplestone stated that AI has become a significant growth area for the company, with approximately 10% of active databases on its platform being utilized for AI applications.

Recently, a provider of open-source application development platforms and Postgres database services, Supabase Inc., has raised USD 80 million in funding, bringing its total raised to USD 196 million.

The recent Series C funding round, initially reported by a leading media house, was led by Peak XV and Craft Ventures, with participation from Avra Capital, along with previous investors Coatue, Felicis, and Y Combinator.

Supabase, which previously raised USD 80 million in its Series B round in 2022, did not disclose its current valuation. However, Co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone stated in the interview that the latest funding was an “up round,” indicating an increase in the company’s value.

The company positions itself as an open-source alternative to Firebase, Google’s main application development platform. Developers widely use Firebase to create apps for Android, iOS, and the web. In addition to offering an integrated development environment, Firebase provides a database service, analytics tracking tools, bug reporting and fixing capabilities, as well as tools for feature experimentation.

Supabase delivers many of the essential features developers require to begin building applications, with its primary offering centered around a Postgres database. In addition, it provides authentication services, edge functions, real-time subscriptions, storage, and vector embeddings, all built on top of its core Postgres platform.

Copplestone explained in an interview that Supabase is among the first Postgres companies to support the pgvector extension, which allows the Postgres database to store and query vectors. This functionality is crucial for developers working on generative artificial intelligence applications, as their large language models depend heavily on unstructured data. Storing this data as “vector embeddings”—numerical representations—makes it easier for models to process and identify patterns.

Copplestone highlighted that AI has emerged as a major growth area for the company, with around 10% of active databases on its platform currently being used for AI applications.

While Supabase’s website still positions the company as an alternative to Firebase, Copplestone said in an interview that he now views it more as a “Postgres platform.” This shift seems logical, given Postgres’s rising popularity among database users, whereas mentions of Firebase have become less frequent lately.

“People adopt us because we’re easy to use, like Firebase, and also because we’re Postgres, and Postgres is popular to use,” Copplestone added that combining the two makes Supabase the “easiest Postgres offering.”

Nevertheless, Postgres isn’t the only key draw for Supabase. The company also attracts a significant number of new customers through its authentication service. According to Copplestone, this is often the first product new users adopt, and once they do, they typically go on to explore the Postgres database and other offerings.

The company reported gaining strong momentum with enterprise customers, noting that developers from companies such as GitHub Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Netflix Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are actively using its platform.

Anu Hariharan of Avra Capital also emphasized Supabase’s growth, noting that the company has surpassed 900,000 signups over the past four years. “It has seen unprecedented organic adoption among developers. We believe that for companies seeking a robust, developer-friendly solution, Supabase’s Postgres is rapidly becoming the preferred choice,” he added.