Hygraph GmbH, a startup helping companies manage content assets such as product listings and marketing copy, today announced that it has raised $30 million in funding.

The Series B round was led by One Peak. Berlin-based Hygraph said that it will use the capital to speed up product development initiatives. Additionally, the startup will expand its go-to-market efforts with a particular focus on growing its customer base in North America.

Many applications display content from multiple sources. A retailer’s e-commerce website, for example, might aggregate product listings from its on-premises and cloud-based inventory management systems. Moreover, some applications also display third-party content stored outside the corporate network.

Pulling content from several different systems into an application often requires custom code. That code can be difficult to develop and expensive to maintain, according to Hygraph. The startup says it can simplify the task for enterprises and speed up software projects in the process. 

Hygraph offers a so-called content federation platform. The platform can aggregate content from multiple sources, such as inventory management systems, and make it available through a single application programming interface. Developers may then use the API to pull product listings and other assets into their applications instead of having to build custom code to manage the task.

According to the company, its content API is based on an open-source technology called GraphQL. The technology is used to streamline data retrieval for enterprise applications.

When an e-commerce website attempts to retrieve product listings from an inventory management system, errors can emerge. The system may return either fewer records than the application requested or too many. GraphQL avoids such issues, which are fairly common in traditional APIs, and thereby makes the process of fetching information more efficient.

Hygraph’s platform pairs its data retrieval features with a so-called headless CMS, or content management system. Companies can use the system to store assets such as marketing blog posts, knowledge base articles and product listings. A headless CMS is a specialized type of content management system that makes it easier to adapt content for different devices.

“Today, organizations not only need to distribute content to multiple devices, but they also need to access and serve up content from a myriad of sources,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Michael Lukaszczyk. “In the same way the headless CMS changed content distribution, Hygraph is disrupting the integration of content and data to enable the creation of new digital services and business models in the content economy.”

Hygraph says its platform has been adopted by more than 400 companies to date. Its customers include major brands such as Koninklijke Philips N.V. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. 

Image: Hygraph