In February 2019 Mercato Partners led the $25M Series C investment in Cloud Elements, a Denver Colorado based API Integration Platform. Cloud Elements is an emerging leader in API integration platforms – helping hundreds of software companies and large enterprises innovate faster and easily integrate their digital ecosystems. The company’s one-to-many “virtualized” integration approach enables developers to unify thousands of APIs, build common data models for core business functions, and reduce the pain, cost and complexity of application and data integration.

Customers include large software platform companies like SAP and IBM; independent software vendors like Axway, DoubleDutch, FinancialForce, Microstrategy and Sage; financial technology providers such as Danske Bank, FIS, PaySimple and Western Union; and digital business units of large enterprises like Dun & Bradstreet and Xerox.

Cloud Elements’ unique “embedded integration” model focuses on software providers, systems integrators and enterprise customers, allowing them to tap into an established platform with 170+ pre-built integrations, common data models and normalized capabilities for authentication, discovery, search, workflows, error handling and API maintenance. This eliminates the need for software teams to build their own integration stack, while enabling them to deliver more unified and expansive experiences to their customers.

“APIs are a great way to make software work together, but developers now have to deal with hundreds or thousands of APIs to automate basic business processes. Point-to-point integration can’t scale to address this challenge,” said Mark Geene, CEO and co-founder, Cloud Elements. “We virtualize and simplify API integration to make all APIs work together, look the same and operate the same – using industry standard protocols. We put your application at the center of a digital ecosystem, based on common language and unified data models. As our customers like to say, it’s integration that starts simple and stays simple.”

“We see the unique value Cloud Elements creates through a product that streamlines and simplifies the way companies deal with the proliferation of APIs,” said Josh Christensen, principal investor at Mercato Partners, who now joins the Cloud Elements board. “Mark and his team have revolutionized the way companies integrate applications by doing it more quickly, easily and effectively. We’re excited to add Cloud Elements to our portfolio and be part of their future growth in this rapidly expanding market.”

Mercato Partners is pleased to support Mark Geene and the Cloud Elements team spreading the coverage and awareness of their innovative solution to the increasingly complex integration market.