Cohere Raised $125 Million, Netlify Graph Was Released, APIs and Web 3.0
This is issue 2022.07 of the API Changelog, a weekly mix of API news, commentary, and opinion. In this issue, you’ll get to know the most relevant API-related information from the week of February 14, 2022. Subscribe now, so you never miss an issue of the API Changelog.
Funding and M&A
Cohere, an NLP platform, raised $125M in a Series B round. Tiger Global Management led the investment, with participation from Section 32, Radical Ventures, and Index Ventures, among others.
Stitch, an API fintech, raised $21M in a Series A round. The Spruce House Partnership led the investment, with participation from PayPal Ventures, Firstminute Capital, and CRE Venture Capital, among others.
Passthrough, a fund workflow automation service, raised $5M in a Seed round. Positive Sum led the investment, with participation from Okta Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Company Ventures, among others.
Actual, an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) platform, raised $5M in a Seed round. Participants include Sequoia Scout, Buckley Ventures, and SignalFire.
MoneyHash, a payment orchestration platform, raised $3M in a Pre-seed round. COTU Ventures led the investment, with participation from VentureSouq, Nuwa Capital, and Kepple Africa Ventures, among others.
IIMMPACT, a payment aggregation platform, raised $2M in a Seed round. Sequoia Capital India was the only participant in the round, investing through Surge, its India and Southeast Asia scale-up program.
Announcements
Netlify announced the availability of Netlify Graph as a beta feature. According to VentureBeat, the new feature “enables developers to securely read, write, and subscribe to data from third-party APIs without managing authentication tokens or having to write any API-specific code.”
Aserto announced that it’s now generally available. Aserto is an authorization service that provides a platform that lets you add permissions and RBAC to your application.
Salesforce announced the availability of their Reports and Dashboards REST API. The API “gives you programmatic access to your report and dashboard data as defined in the report builder and dashboard builder.”
Xignite announced that they’re launching a cryptocurrency data API. “Xignite’s new cryptocurrency API, XigniteCrypto, provides real-time and historical quotes for over 900 cryptocurrencies including coins and tokens.”
Fintech
Crypto APIs published “The Rise of the API Economy and Web 3.0.” The article goes through the history of the Web, from 1.0 to 3.0, and explores how APIs have been fueling its growth. The authors explain how “blockchain APIs allow businesses to operate across different networks from a single point and allow them to support multiple currencies.”
The Paypers published “Does Open Banking live up to its claims? Key aspects that hinder smooth transactions.” This piece explores the goals of Open Banking and the friction that still exists. The author suggests a possible solution to make Open Banking easier to use and offer greater benefits.
API-first
Sherif Sallam wrote “API Documentation Best Practices.” Sherif goes through the goals of API Documentation and shares the different types of documentation that exist. The author then shares their view of what good API documentation should have.
Management
Mark Cheshire wrote “API Management vs. Service Mesh: The Choice Doesn’t Have to Be Yours.” In this article, Mark compares traditional API management with service mesh and highlights the benefits and pitfalls of each approach. The author then shares that both approaches can co-exist because they complement each other.
Deepak Maheshwari wrote “What is API Management and What are the different phases in API Lifecycle?” The author shares a comprehensive view of the API lifecycle and positions API management as the discipline that manages the whole lifecycle.
Practice
Vaadarsh wrote “A new way of debouncing your API calls.” In this article, Vaadarsh explores a way to optimize API calls applying a technique called debouncing. By applying debouncing, you make sure that an API doesn’t get called above a certain frequency. However, that can lead to problems, so the author proposes mixing it with controlling the maximum number of parallel requests.
Syed Saad Ahmed wrote “Microservices, gRPC and Protocol Buffers — Hello World.” In this piece, Syed explains what gRPC is and guides you into building an API using it.
Amir Boroumand wrote “Mocking an API with Rapidmock.” This article gives you an overview of Rapidmock, a tool that lets you quickly mock an API.
Ayman Elsayed wrote “Synchronous vs. Asynchronous API Calls.” In this article, Ayman compares synchronous and asynchronous API calls and shares his view on when you should use the first approach or the latter.
Security Boulevard published “Implementing API Testing Automation.” The piece shares the concept of automating API testing and highlights different tools that can help you.
Khalil SAIDI wrote “How to Develop Your Own API with Node.js and Express.” This article is a step-by-step guide on building an API from scratch using Node.js and Express.
Danielle wrote “How to simulate API latency during development using Hoverfly.” In this piece, Danielle shows what hoverfly is and how you can use it to simulate API latency.
Security
Dave Howell wrote “Read the Fine Print: Can’t Block an API Attack? You Can’t Protect.” In this article, Dave shares that if you can’t block an API attack, then you can’t say that you’re protected. The author then shows alternative solutions that can help you block an API attack.
Helga Labus wrote “How do I select an API security solution for my business?” In this piece, Helga shares the views of several experts on how to select a security solution that fits your needs. According to the author, the “use of tools like Google’s Apigee and API collaboration software like Swaggerhub or Postman is on the rise and can provide a full picture of an API and all its interactions.”
