IBM acquires GraphQL startup StepZen to step up its game in API management

News Summary

  • Now, to raise its profile with developers adopting it, IBM has acquired a GraphQL startup called StepZen, which provides tools for those working in hybrid cloud environments to build and scale GraphQL deployments to pull data from disparate sources.The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
  • One survey I saw from 2019 notes that around 38% of developers have adopted it to pull data from multiple sources.
  • Software these days accounts for more than half the company’s revenues, and it’s one of the company’s bright spots in terms of growth.
  • StepZen was founded in 2020 by the same people who started Apigee (which Google acquired for $625 million in 2016), and it appears to have raised just $8 million since that time (and the last time it raised was in 2020).
  • GraphQL, developed internally at Facebook to help developers with API management before getting rolled out as an open-source query language in 2015, has gained traction as an alternative (or complement) to REST and other tools.
  • StepZen, in short, provides a way to engage with and use GraphQL more easily.Yet there has been a split opinion on just how widely used GraphQL is today.
GraphQL, developed internally at Facebook to help developers with API management before getting rolled out as an opensource query language in 2015, has gained traction as an alternative (or compleme [+2892 chars]