JavaScript framework startup Meteor Development Group takes on $20M

Meteor Development Group, the startup behind the Meteor JavaScript framework for building web and mobile applications, announced today a $20 million round of funding.

The startup’s technology has become one of the most popular open-source projects on the GitHub source code repository website — but all this time, it has never generated revenue, cofounder and chief executive Geoff Schmidt told VentureBeat in an interview. That should be changing later this year, as the startup introduces Galaxy, a service for running Meteor applications on top of cloud infrastructure — without having to worry about provisioning or managing that infrastructure.

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The startup has talked about launching Galaxy for three years. Since then several backend services have gotten acquired: Facebook bought Parse, Google bought Firebase, PayPal bought StackMob, and Red Hat bought FeedHenry. But Meteor Development Group can rest assured that developers have continued to pay attention to its open-source technology, which is not the case with those other companies.

“There are businesses built on Meteor,” Schmidt said. “It’s a stable platform.”

Of course, there are other popular JavaScript frameworks for building applications, including AngularJS and React. Meteor will provide “more easy and official” support for them, Schmidt said.

But beyond JavaScript frameworks, there are several other systems developers can use to build modern applications. On the mobile front, Apple has the Swift language, while Google has Dart. And there are also several older tools, including Django and Rails.

“It’s a whole different architecture that you have to follow if you want to deliver that better user experience,” Schmidt said. Specifically, Meteor emphasizes the power of running software on the client in JavaScript, using data from the remote server — and writing it all in good old JavaScript.

Meteor Development Group recently introduced Meteor support for Windows.

In addition to rolling out Galaxy — initially on Amazon Web Services and later on other clouds — the startup will develop its marketing and sales functions and establish a partnership program, Schmidt said.

Meteor Development Group started in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, with 22 employees. In 2012 the startup announced an $11.2 million first round of funding.

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Matrix Partners led the new round in the startup. Andreessen Horowitz and Trinity Ventures also participated.