1.5 The Deno Company

The seed Funding

On March 29, 2021, the Deno team announced the establishment of Deno Company, a significant milestone in Deno's development. The company secured a seed investment of $4.3 million, later increased to $4.9 million, from a group of investors including Dan Scholnick from Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo from Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs from Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures, and Ben Noordhuis.

Deno emerges as a revitalizing force within the technological landscape, breathing fresh vitality into the existing ecosystem. Its mission is to furnish a contemporary, efficient programming system that remains aligned with browser APIs. Unlike a monolithic entity, Deno constitutes an amalgamation of technologies that possess the potential for versatile adaptation across a spectrum of requirements. Recognizing that not every scenario involving server-side JavaScript necessitates interaction with the file system, the underlying framework allows for the removal of extraneous connections. This ingenious mechanism empowers developers to forge tailored runtimes for diverse applications: think of Electron-style graphical user interfaces, Cloudflare Worker-style Serverless Functions, or even embedded scripts tailored for databases.

The seed funding enables the Deno team to expand its engineering team, ensuring dedicated resources for platform development, issue resolution, bug fixing, and timely software releases. This investment underscores Deno's evolution into a robust foundation upon which others can confidently construct their innovative creations. With the necessary resources, the team is poised to systematically address issues, rectify bugs, and ensure punctual software releases, solidifying Deno's position as a revitalizing force in the technological landscape.

The Series A

While the primary Deno development team focused on building the Deno runtime, a segment of the Deno team worked on a project called Deno Deploy

Deno Deploy is a decentralized framework designed to execute JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly in proximity to users, at the edges of the network. This system is closely integrated with the V8 runtime, ensuring low latency and eliminating unnecessary complexity. The framework's primary objective is to provide a platform for developers to build applications that can be executed close to the user, reducing latency and improving overall performance.

Deno Deploy offers several key features that make it an attractive platform for developers. These features include:

• Support for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly: Deno Deploy allows developers to write applications in the language of their choice, without requiring significant modifications or workarounds.

• Decentralized Architecture: Deno Deploy's decentralized architecture enables applications to be executed at the edges of the network, closer to the user. This reduces latency and improves overall performance.

• Integration with V8 Runtime: Deno Deploy is closely integrated with the V8 runtime, ensuring low latency and eliminating unnecessary complexity.

• Simplified Development Process: Deno Deploy streamlines the development process, allowing developers to focus on writing code rather than managing infrastructure.

• GitHub Integration: Deno Deploy integrates seamlessly with GitHub, enabling developers to push, review, and merge code changes efficiently.

• High Performance: Deno Deploy is designed to provide high performance, deploying applications in under a second and serving content efficiently across the globe.

Funding and Future Development

The success of Deno Deploy led to a significant influx of funding, amounting to $21 million, through a series of investment rounds. This funding aims to transform the Deploy project into a fully-fledged product, catering to a wider range of needs and users. The Deno company plans to utilize this funding to engage top-tier engineers, establish a dependable infrastructure for businesses of all sizes, explore commercial applications of Isolate Cloud technology across various industries, and drive growth and market prospects.