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Nokia , once the human race ’s biggest mobile headphone company but now mainly a provider of infrastructure and services to carriers , has made an acquisition in its bidding to be a span between the humanity of technical school and telecom . It ’s acquiringRapid , formerly known as RapidAPI , a startup that mesh an API marketplace . Nokia will be integrate Rapid into a political platform it ’s building to help 5 G operators spread their networks to more developers .
Financial terms of the deal are not being unwrap in theofficial announcement . Rapid was oncevalued at $ 1 billionand count as many as 4 million users tapping into some 40,000 APIs , but it ’s see a substantial decline in its business organisation in the last couple of years . The companies are not disclose Rapid ’s participating users as of today except to remark that it is a number in the M , and that genus Apis are in the C . As Nokia is publicly trade , more fiscal inside information may come through in a next filing . ( Update : some haveconjecturedthat the deal could be for as little as $ 100 million . )
The slew will let in a public marketplace , endeavour religious service , and an endeavour - grade API hub designed for building , testing , and sharing genus Apis internally and outwardly ; and Nokia is pitching it as a move to help carrier work more well with developer .
“ operator need a bridge circuit to connect to chiliad of developers to drive enterprise and consumer value institution and monetise their networks , ” said Raghav Sahgal , president of Cloud and internet Services at Noka , in a statement .
On Rapid ’s side , the landscape for technology has shifted drastically over the last couple of years , and many posterior - stage startup have find it challenge to meet the lofty forecast they had dress while raising self-aggrandizing support rounds in more floaty eld . Rapid ’s $ 1 billion valuation was based on afunding around from 2022 .
Rapid rose to prominence amid a thunder of involvement in APIs a X ago , when APIs were first come forth as the webbing between businesses and developer building service around them . Rapid ’s tar was that it provided a one - full stop topographic point to find and use APIs in what appeared to be a very fragmented market .
But it ’s not clear that Rapid found a route to gainfulness in providing that Robert William Service . Rapid ’s founder Iddo Gino ( a wunderkind who started the company aged just 17 in 2015 ) , stepped down as CEO in April 2023 , replaced by Marc Friend , and in the weeks following , the startup find atleast twomajor rounds oflayoffsthat reduce head count by 82 % ( clew newspaper headline of the company ’s “ Rapid descent “ ) .
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Rapid , establish out of San Francisco , had raised nearly $ 273 million in speculation funding from big - name investor that included Andreessen Horowitz , Microsoft , and SoftBank , among others .
It ’s not clear how many people are actually at Rapid as of now , nor how many would be joining Nokia in the deal . Nokia ’s instruction emphasizes product more than people , take down that it is acquiring “ technology plus , including the world ’s largest API hub used by thousands of participating developers globally , and its extremely skilled inquiry and ontogeny unit . ”
For Nokia , the acquisition is an interesting and somewhat ironic turn given the Finnish ship’s company ’s chronicle as a pioneer in the world of Mobile River .
Back in the nineties , Nokia arrange the pace for building mobile networks around the globe , and alongside that , it became the world ’s No . 1 French telephone maker .
In the first X of the 2000s , however , it missed the boat in the shift to smartphones , which became dominated by Apple and Google ( and Samsung and the hundreds of others building on Google ’s Android operating organisation ) . Some argue that one of Nokia ’s cock-a-hoop failing was its unfitness to lay down an extensible ecosystem for apps and third company ( and developer ) to build for its smartphones . So it ’s interesting that it is now positioning itself as an enabler for that very purpose .
Specifically , Nokia sees an chance for carriers to promote more developments on costly 5 1000 mesh that are now in place but in many cases underutilized .
toter , they say , want more third party build lotion and other Robert William Service on these connection , and they have launched a novel “ connection as Code ” political platform to that end . Rapid ’s API framework will exist as part of that enterprisingness . Nokia say that carriers and other service providers signed up to the platform include BT , DISH , Google Cloud , Infobip , Orange , Telefonica , and Telecom Argentina , as well as 20 others .
“ We are pleased to join forcefulness with Nokia , ” Friend , the CEO of Rapid , tell in a statement . “ The compounding of Rapid ’s API technology and R&D expertise with Nokia ’s scale and electronic connection and API domain expertise will enable us to flourish the broad API ecosystem . ”
Updated with more detail on price .
