Cascadia Advises FusionAuth in Receiving a Growth Investment from Updata Partners

has received a growth equity investment from Updata Partners Logo

Cascadia Capital, an investment bank serving middle market clients globally, is pleased to announce our client FusionAuth, a customer identity platform built for developers, has received a $65 million growth equity investment from Updata Partners, a leading growth equity firm. With this investment, FusionAuth will scale go-to-market and product development to meet increasing demand for its modern, developer-centric approach to customer identity.

Founded in 2018, FusionAuth is profitable and bootstrapped itself prior to this investment. The platform is deployed across six continents with more than 450 customers, including major brands, such as Frontdoor, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., and Stihl. This funding builds on a strong history of innovation and growth for the company, which has more than doubled revenue each year. With a free community edition that has more than 13 million downloads, FusionAuth enables developers to easily add registration, login, and user management features to their applications, all built on industry standards.

“Authentication is a mission-critical component for most applications, but engineering and product teams can no longer afford to take on the risk and complexity required to build their own solutions,” said FusionAuth founder and CEO Brian Pontarelli. “FusionAuth is transforming customer identity with a feature-rich platform that makes it easy for developers to install and run anywhere then integrate with anything in minutes.”

Developers use FusionAuth for multifactor authentication, passwordless login, passkey support, machine-to-machine authentication, security controls, and advanced threat detection. The company boasts a robust library of APIs, SDKs, and the ability to work with any language or architecture.

FusionAuth is the only authentication solution with complete hosting flexibility. It can be deployed on nearly any computer anywhere in the world. This allows developers to run FusionAuth locally, on virtual/cloud servers, or on dedicated hardware — even without an internet connection — or leverage FusionAuth’s worldwide managed hosting called FusionAuth Cloud.

“The proverb ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ can describe the origin stories of many developer-centric infrastructure software companies. When Brian Pontarelli and Daniel DeGroff needed a customer identity solution for a project, they evaluated existing open source and commercial alternatives. Dissatisfied with the available options, they elected to build the customer identity solution they wanted. Brian and Daniel’s API-first, downloadable approach resonated with practitioners who embraced the community edition and clamored for support, premium features, and a hosted version,” noted Matt Riendeau, Cascadia Managing Director. “Updata’s board-level guidance and capital infusion will help FusionAuth capitalize on strong product and market fit by raising awareness and further accelerating revenue growth.”

“Working with Cascadia was awesome!” Pontarelli added. “They understood our industry deeply and helped articulate our business and value to potential partners. Their team was quick to respond with great insights, data, reports, and analysis.”