Saleor, a Poland-based startup that develops an open source headless e-commerce platform used to build online shops — has pulled in an $8 million seed-extension round led by Target Global (the investors that have previously backed the likes of Revolut and Auto1) and e-commerce giant Zalando. Also participating were SNR VC Kevin Mahaffey, Cherry Ventures, and TQ Ventures.
Saleor’s API for e-commerce does the back-end heavy lifting for online shopping while developers produce a bespoke front end.
The seed-extension round is noteworthy, as it’s clear open source is gaining traction in e-commerce where normally proprietary solutions abound. Saleor competes against other more traditional e-commerce tools such as Builder.io, BigCommerce, and Elastic Path, and legacy vendors such as Salesforce.
Saleor CEO Mirek Mencel said:
“We’re thrilled to welcome Target Global and Zalando to the Saleor team. With the new capital, we’ll further establish Saleor as the most composable, multimarket-ready platform available while keeping the dev community at the heart of what we do. We’ll help developers deliver business value for their companies more quickly and reliably than ever.”
Lina Chong, Partner at Target Global, commented: “We’re deeply committed to backing innovative ventures. Saleor’s thriving open-source community, robust SaaS offering, and forward-thinking vision harmonise seamlessly with our thesis on global commerce businesses.”
Jan Bartels, SVP B2B at Zalando, said: “With ZEOS, we want to offer brands and retailers a holistic solution for their multi-channel sales. The brands’ own online stores play an important role in this. Here, we see a great fit with Saleor’s vision, offering and expertise, which can also help us to expand our capabilities further, for example, in exposing our convenient delivery options to the Saleor checkout.”
Founded in 2020 but existing as a project since 2013, Saleor is an open source, headless, composable e-commerce platform. It was originally started by the web agency of founders Mirek Mencel and Patryk Zawadzki, who then spun it out as its own startup. Today, the platform is used by such brands as Lush and Breitling.
