Elastic Path Secures $60M in Funding for Composable Commerce Growth

5 mins

The Mandalorian might have popularized the creed of "This is the Way."

But in the galaxy of composable commerce, it seems there's a new mantra: "This is the Path."

Elastic Path, a leader in the explosive category of composable commerce, recently announced a $60 million growth financing round from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. This included participation from existing investors led by Sageview Capital.

With this new infusion of capital, Elastic Path is poised to expand its empire. With a total raise of over $120 million, the company appears well-funded and well-positioned to continue leading the market away from traditional, monolithic commerce platforms to more composable solutions.

"As digital moves from a channel to the heart of the enterprise, brands demand more: More speed. More control. More flexibility. And our strong growth is clear evidence that we are meeting that demand with a product that enables brands to manage the complexities of their business." said Jamus Driscoll, CEO at Elastic Path. "I'd like to thank our new and existing investors for their continued belief in our vision of Composable Commerce, and with this capital, we look forward to accelerating market change, one successful customer at a time."

What is composable commerce?

Composable commerce is a modern approach by which e-Commerce teams are empowered to select and assemble various best-of-breed solutions from across the digital stack and compose them to meet their exact business requirements. Instead of trying to force-fit standard "out-of-the-box" e-Commerce functionality to fit specific needs, composable commerce leverages MACH (Microservices, APIs, Cloud-native, Headless) and JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, & Markup) architectures to adapt to rapidly changing market dynamics – now and in the future.

The market is rapidly moving to composable-centric solutions. Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that embrace composability will outpace the competition by 80% in implementing new product features. And according to the 2021 State of Composable Commerce Report, 95% of e-Commerce practitioners believe composable commerce is the approach businesses should take.

Elastic Path spearheaded its "Composable Commerce Movement" to make it simpler and faster for brands with complex requirements to deliver unique digital commerce experiences. The company makes this possible by providing a MACH-based commerce platform and what they refer to as "Pre-Composed Solutions" that make it fast and easy to migrate. It also offers Composable Commerce XA, which provides complete experience assurance for multi-vendor commerce solutions.

Elastic Path has built a clear reputation as a leader in headless e-Commerce. Its composable, API-first commerce platform is specifically targeted towards enterprise-level organizations, but the growth of the pre-composed elements may broaden its target audiences. For all these reasons (and more), Elastic Path was featured on our Top 10 Headless Commerce Platforms list.

Banking on future growth

According to the company, the new investment will enable Elastic Path to build on strong performance in 2021 as the market accelerates its shift to composable commerce.

Highlights from the past year include:

400+% year over year growth
140+ new product releases, including Catalog Composer™, a groundbreaking advancement for brands with complex catalog and channel requirements
25+ new Pre-Composed Solutions™ and Accelerators added to the Composable Commerce Hub™
Introduced Composable Commerce XA™, the only production-support offering spanning multi-vendor Composable Commerce solutions
Became the first and only MACH-based commerce vendor to achieve SOC 2 for security
40+ new partners onboarded
Added new marquee enterprise customers, including Konica Minolta, HarperCollins, Orgill, and DMSI

Elastic Path also acquired Moltin in early 2020, a fellow API-first commerce technology platform, helping to solidify its position in the headless commerce market and deploy commerce experiences faster, easier, and at a greater scale.

"We were extremely impressed with Elastic Path's team, the strength of its product offerings, and its impressive growth over the past 12 months," said John Doyle, Director at BlackRock. "We are pleased to partner with Elastic Path to support its continued growth into the future."

MACH... but no MACH Alliance?

With the growing awareness and interest in MACH technologies, it's impossible to ignore the efforts of the MACH Alliance and its mission to "future-proof" enterprise technology for the future of digital experiences. Started by commercetools, the fledgling organization has already amassed over 40 members in its cabal, all platforms that feature a singular, pure-play focus on the MACH attributes. The MACH Alliance recently expanded its charter to include a class of Enabler members that provide the platforms and technologies that other members utilize. This includes netlify, MongoDB, and most recently AWS.

While it offers a fully MACH-enabled solution, Elastic Path has been vocal about its lack of presence in the MACH Alliance. In a blog post, the company revealed why it has chosen not to participate in the highly-visible organization, particularly the MACH Alliance has grown its influence over the last few months. The key reason: Elastic Path's strategy to expand its breadth of offerings and include multiple products such as Elastic Path Commerce – which is not microservices-based.

This along is a key blocker for joining the MACH Alliance, but Elastic Path has instead forged its own "path" with the Composable Commerce Movement, adding its Composable Commerce Hub – a library of partner resources designed to help brands reduce the risk and complexity of using MACH-based technologies and empower them to rapidly deliver business outcomes. To date, its Hub contains composable solutions from vendors such as Acquia, Amazon, Contentful, and more.

About Elastic Path

Elastic Path is the company powering mission-critical digital commerce for the world's leading brands, such as Intuit, Pella, Deckers Brands, T-Mobile, and over 250 other leading brands. As relentless innovators, Elastic Path pioneered the Headless Commerce space in 2011 and spearheaded Composable Commerce in 2020. Elastic Path provides industry-leading headless commerce solutions for digitally-driven brands to rapidly build, deploy, and continuously optimize highly differentiated commerce experiences. Elastic Path is a global company with offices in Boston, Newcastle, Reading, Toronto, and Vancouver.