Investing in Fern
Fern raises a Series A to meet the growing demand for SDKs and API Docs
I'm thrilled to announce that Fern has raised their $9M Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Since investing in their seed round in 2023, Fern has quickly become the trusted SDK and API documentation solution for over 150 companies, including Square, Webflow, ElevenLabs, LaunchDarkly, and Intercom.
The Problem: Great APIs Need Great DX
In today's API economy, a company's success increasingly depends on how easily developers can integrate with their services. Two elements are absolutely essential for adoption: high-quality SDKs and comprehensive documentation.
While giants like Stripe can afford dedicated developer experience teams, most companies struggle to deliver the same level of quality. The traditional approaches all have significant drawbacks:
Build in-house: Requires scaling engineering resources linearly with each supported language
Use existing generators: Often produces clunky, obviously machine-generated code that developers avoid
Skip SDK generation: Pushes integration complexity onto customers, slowing adoption
Fern levels the playing field by making world-class SDKs and API documentation accessible to every company.
What makes Fern exceptional is their comprehensive 2-in-1 approach. Their SDK generator produces truly idiomatic code in seven languages (TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, C#, PHP, and Ruby), respecting each language's unique capabilities while maintaining consistency across platforms. Their documentation solution creates beautiful, customizable sites with interactive API references and playgrounds that seamlessly integrate with the generated SDKs.
Looking ahead, I’m particularly excited about Fern's vision for the future of API integrations. As API calls made by AI agents begin to outnumber those made by human developers, we're witnessing a shift from developer experience (DX) to agent experience (AX). Fern is positioning itself at the forefront of this transformation with initiatives like Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers that turn APIs into agent-accessible interfaces, and AI-powered documentation assistants that provide instant technical support.
By solving the SDK and documentation challenge comprehensively, Fern enables companies to focus on their core products while providing a world-class integration experience. I’m thrilled to have backed Fern at the seed round and I will support the team as they continue to transform how developers and AI agents interact with APIs.
