Macrometa Inc., a Palo Alto, California-based edge computing startup, today announced that it has closed a $7 million seed round led by DNX Ventures with participation from existing investors. 

Macrometa operates a cloud platform on which companies can build geographically distributed applications. A geographically distributed application can be, for example, a package tracking system that collects location data from delivery trucks in multiple countries. Or it may be a software-as-a-service application that serves customers in different  parts of the world.

A common issue for such workloads is latency. If an application supports users in a dozen different countries but it’s hosted in a U.S. data center, then every request from international users has to travel to the U.S. and back for processing. Macrometa enables companies to distribute their applications across 175 “edge regions” worldwide to bring them physically closer to users, which it says significantly reduces latency-related processing delays. 

Macrometa’s platform, which it calls the Global Data Network, is at its core a cloud-based NoSQL database. Customers can build their applications on top of the database and host them in the edge regions closest to their users. The Global Data Network keeps records in different regions synced to avoid inconsistencies and, optimally, can prevent records from leaving a given region if they’re subject to regulations that require data to be stored locally.

Tech-savvy enterprises can also build a geographically distributed application backend themselves on one of the major public clouds. However, implementing and maintaining such a setup is often technically complicated. Macrometa says that by providing an all-in-one solution with all the necessary features included out of the box, it simplifies the task.

The startup promises to reduce costs in the process as well. “Our customers use the Global Data Network to bring their cloud apps physically closer to their users worldwide, scaling performance by 50x-100x and reducing their cloud costs by 70% or more,” said Macrometa co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chetan Venkatesh.

The startup is going after a growing market. There is an expanding set of latency-sensitive use cases, such as real-time production line analytics and fleet monitoring, that require applications to be geographically distributed in the interest of reducing network delays. It’s such a big opportunity that the major cloud providers have also joined the fray with their own edge computing platforms.

Besides DNX Ventures, Macrometa’s $7 million seed round saw the participation of Benhamou Global Ventures, Partech Partners, Fusion Fund, Sway Ventures, Velar Capital and Shasta Ventures.

Image: Macrometa