API development startup Apiary raises $6.8M and launches a testing service

Apiary, a startup with a web service developers can use to design and make documentation for application programming interfaces, announced today a $6.8 million round of funding.

The startup today is also launching a new tool for testing APIs to make sure they work as they should. It’s like a continuous integration system for testing and deploying source code, but it’s for APIs.

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“Every time I make a change to my software, all tests run automatically on our servers,” Apiary founder and chief executive Jakub Nesetril told VentureBeat in an interview.

The funding for Apiary follows years of funding and acquisitions in the domain of API management. Most recently Apigee went public. That sort of software, which public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services recently started to offer, is now a commodity, Nesetril said.

Tools for intelligently designing APIs before deploying them could end up being the next exciting area for APIs, which are proliferating. Other startups in the market include Gelato, ReadMe, and Sandbox.

Apiary started in 2011 and is based in San Francisco. The startup employs 33 people now. The headcount should be at around 60 in a year, Nesetril said.

Around 130,000 developers at around 33,000 companies use Apiary, with hundreds of paying customers, including Akamai, Microsoft, L.L. Bean, and Salesforce, Nesetril said.

Flybridge led the new round. Baseline Ventures and Credo Ventures also participated.

To date the startup has raised $8.4 million.