Acquired by Nokia (Nov 2024); price undisclosed, est. ≤$100M
The rise & fall
5 moments · 2015–2024
The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2015
🌱
2015
Founded by a teenage developer
Iddo Gino starts a hub where developers can find and connect to APIs — it grows into the largest public API marketplace.
TechCrunch
Mar 2022
📈
Mar 2022
The peak: $1B on SoftBank money$1B
A $150M SoftBank-led Series D values the marketplace — 4 million developers, some 40,000 APIs — at $1B, with $273M raised along the way from a16z, Microsoft and SoftBank.
TechCrunch
2022–23
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–23
Glassdoor reviews described a jarring gap between message and reality: employees said they had been assured the company was thriving and in rapid-growth mode only months before the first of two mass layoffs, and recalled a top-down culture in which fear discouraged anyone from raising problems.
2023
💔
2023
82% of the company, gone
Stretched across too many fronts, Rapid cuts staff twice in one year — from roughly 230 employees to about 42 — and falls out of the club.
TechCrunch
Nov 2024
🤝
Nov 2024
Acquired by Nokia for ≤$100M (est.)
Nokia buys what remains of the marketplace; the price goes undisclosed, with analysts estimating $100M or less — a tenth of the peak.
TechCrunch
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
RapidAPI (later Rapid) ran the largest public API marketplace, linking some 4 million developers to roughly 40,000 APIs, and hit a $1B valuation in March 2022 on a $150M SoftBank-led Series D. After trying to compete on too many fronts, it cut about 82% of its staff across two 2023 rounds, shrinking from roughly 230 employees to about 42; in November 2024 the remnant was acquired by Nokia for an estimated $100M or less.
Source: TechCrunch: $1B Series D Mar 2022; headcount cut ~82% in 2023; Nokia acquisition Nov 2024, analysts est. ≤$100M
