Urban Airship Raises $15 Million From Verizon, Salesforce
Urban Airship, which helps companies add features like push notifications and in-app purchases to their mobile apps on multiple mobile platforms, has raised a $15 million Series C round with strategic investments from Verizon and Salesforce.
Context & Ripple Effects
Urban Airship sits in the mobile developer-infrastructure layer: its service lets companies add push notifications and in-app purchases across multiple mobile platforms without rebuilding per OS. The $15 million Series C is notable less for size than for who wrote checks — Verizon, a carrier with distribution reach into handsets, and Salesforce, which spent 2010-2011 assembling customer-engagement channels, including its confirmed Etacts acquisition and Chatter integrations with Facebook and Twitter via Service Cloud 3.
A week before the round closed, reports circulated that Urban Airship was acquiring location startup SimpleGeo in an all-stock deal worth around $3.5 million — unconfirmed, but consistent with a company broadening from notifications into richer mobile context. Strategic money from a carrier and an enterprise SaaS vendor signals both see the notification pipe as a channel worth owning rather than a commodity.
First-order effects
- Urban Airship gets capital and two strategic backers whose interests align with its growth: Verizon can pull the service toward handset distribution, while Salesforce gains a mobile push channel adjacent to its Chatter and Service Cloud engagement products.
Second-order effects
- Salesforce's CRM rivals now face a competitor bundling mobile notifications into enterprise customer-engagement stacks, pressuring them to buy or partner for equivalent mobile infrastructure rather than build it.
- Carrier involvement puts other mobile toolmakers on notice that telecom operators are willing to take equity positions in the developer-services layer, opening a second class of strategic buyer alongside SaaS vendors.
Third-order effects
- If carrier-and-enterprise-SaaS stakes become the norm, mobile developer infrastructure consolidates around platform owners — the apps layer's plumbing gets absorbed into the distribution and CRM stacks above it, narrowing independent exits for toolmakers.
The trend: Enterprise software vendors and carriers are taking equity stakes in mobile developer-infrastructure startups to secure engagement and distribution channels inside the app economy.