Mapbox goes up against Google Maps with $10M in funding

Justin Kahn

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Mapbox is a Washington and San Francisco based start up that focuses on interactive maps that display a range of specialty information. Its map platform can feature everything from broadband coverage across the US, and the energy use of buildings in New York City, all the way to popular recreational spots.

While still a far reach from Google's realm, Mapbox has just recently raised $10 million in Series A funding. The recent investment comes from Foundry Group and followed last year's investment from the Knight Foundation. "And now we have real runway. For three years, we've been completely bootstrapped, which meant we had only a few months in the bank at any time," Mapbox CEO Eric Gundersen said. "That changed: combined with a rapidly growing userbase, funding lets us plan for years of building the future of geo software, from the ground up."

While it seems as though Google has had somewhat of a strangle hold on the maps business, Mapbox has already implemented its mapping platform with thousands of websites and apps, according to the company, including Foursquare, Evernote, Financial Times, USA Today, Uber, GitHub, Pew Research and The Guardian, to name a few. Financial Times journalist Martin Stabe said that Mapbox's open standards allow them to integrate the platform "with other technologies depending on the project at hand allowing for the flexibility needed in a fast moving technology landscape."

This open standard is something the company plans to focus on moving forward, it plans to hire more personnel while nurturing its relationship with the open source community and maintaining its independence. Mapbox currently gathers most of its data from OpenStreetMap.org, which as you would imagine uses open source satellites among other things.

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