Akka secures $20 million credit facility from Espresso Capital

San Francisco — November 19, 2024 — Espresso Capital announced today that it has provided Akka, a platform to build and run apps that react to change, with a $20 million junior credit facility. The credit facility will help support Akka’s continued growth.

Akka, formerly known as Lightbend, began in 2009 with the purpose to help companies build elastic and resilient applications that take full advantage of the cloud. Akka has been downloaded one billion times and is used by industry titans and disruptors around the world. 

“We are delighted to be partnering with Espresso Capital as our new venture debt provider,” says Akka CEO Tyler Jewell. “Espresso is one of the only providers we have ever met that was truly flexible, prepared to meet us where we are, and able to structure a credit facility that really works for our business. We really appreciate that they took the time to understand how our business works and tailored a solution to meet our specific needs.”

As a business, Akka has a number of unique properties. As both a cloud product and a downloadable software product, it sells both licenses and subscriptions. As a result, it has both contract and pay-as-you-go customers spread across a combination of multi-year and month-to-month accounts. Additionally, Akka transacts with customers across 40 countries around the world. “That kind of dynamism means that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all business, and it underscores how difficult it was to find the right debt provider for our company,” says Jewell. “Not only has Espresso met our needs, they have a great team that we’ve loved working with.”

“Akka delivers mission-critical software, has a strong value proposition, and a loyal enterprise customer base,” says Espresso Executive Director, Eric So. “They are growing at an impressive rate, have a very experienced management team, and are poised for continued success.”

Akka was previously known as Lightbend. To better reflect who they are as a company, and its commitment to Akka, the company and its products were rebranded earlier this month. Jewell summarized this effort by adding, “The industry has spent trillions on infrastructure that cannot guarantee an application’s SLA. It’s time for the industry to think app-down instead of infrastructure-up. With Akka 3, anyone can build and run apps that are responsive by design, guaranteeing SLAs by adapting continuously and independently of the infrastructure.”

About Akka

Akka is relied upon by industry titans and disruptors to build and run applications that are elastic, agile, and guaranteed resilient. For more information, visit www.akka.io. 

About Espresso Capital

Espresso Capital has been empowering fast-growing technology companies with innovative venture debt solutions since 2009. During this period, we’ve funded over 330 companies in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., helping to accelerate growth, extend runway, and increase strategic flexibility with non-dilutive capital. Espresso is headquartered in Toronto, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and London. To learn more about how you can use venture debt to grow your business, visit espressocapital.com.