MapBox Raises $10 Million in Series A Round

MapBox, a cloud-based map platform that allows users to design customized and interactive maps, closed a $10 million Series A round led by Foundry Group yesterday. The Washington, DC. and San Francisco based company, which develops its service entirely on top of the open-source mapping platform OpenStreetMap, has plans to use the funding to grow its 35-member team.

Last year, Google began limiting usage of its Google Maps API, charging websites and apps that consistently generated a high amount of traffic, which lead companies such as Foursquare and Apple to look for ways to build their own maps; both opting to be powered by OpenStreetMap. Any service, which uses OpenStreetMap, can access and edit the source data, but they must also share that data with the OpenStreetMap community for the benefit of all users.

MapBox, which has been bootstrapped until receiving funding from Foundry Group, works with Foursquare to produce maps for the location-based social networking site. With the new funding, MapBox plans to expand their engineering team.

“This is all about growing the engineering team,” Eric Gundersen, MapBox’s CEO told Street Fight. “The investment from Foundry Group combined with our rapidly growing subscriptions is letting us invest even deeper in core open source geo technology.”

In May, MapBox in collaboration with OpenStreetMap launched iD, a map editor that allows cartographers to edit OpenStreetMap’s map database or add information. The company also sees mobile as a massive opportunity to grow its service.

“When we think mobile, we see social and location, and maps are the canvas for all of that,” added Gundersen. “The open source vector rendering we are building gives developers and designers more control of both the look and feel of the map while letting developers integrate the maps deep into their apps.”

Myriah Towner is an intern at Street Fight.