Ably

Ably provides realtime infrastructure for engineering teams building chat, collaborative applications, live dashboards and AI experiences. Pub/Sub supplies messaging APIs, while Chat adds APIs for chat features and Spaces supports collaborative environments. LiveSync publishes database changes to frontends, and LiveObjects synchronizes shared application state across users and devices. AI Transport extends this infrastructure to durable sessions for agents, allowing conversations to survive reconnection, span devices and pause for human input before resuming.

Founded in 2013 by Matthew O’Riordan, CEO, and Paddy Byers, CTO, Ably launched publicly in 2016 after three years of development. Its AI session architecture uses an ordered, durable channel log for inputs, outputs, lifecycle events and control signals; participants reconstruct conversation state from that shared history. LiveObjects addresses shared mutable state through composable maps and counters designed to converge across clients, with last-write-wins resolution for concurrent map updates.

Customers include HubSpot, NASCAR and Webflow. As of August 2026, the company reported more than 2 billion connected devices per month and more than 30 billion connections opened monthly. Ably also reported $78 million in total funding, including a $70 million Series B in 2021 co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital.