Ally.io raises $50M Series C

Well, another day and another company branding on .IO raises another monster funding round. Today Ally.io announced a $50M Series C round after seeing over 300% growth in 2020.

While in some cases it takes meeting with 100+ investors to raise a round, this sounds like the opposite experience as Ally.io had investors essentially banging down the doors:

Ally did not have to twist arms to raise more. Vellore described the round as “extremely competitive” in an email, noting that he had “started the [fundraising] process in early January.” It’s just over mid-February, so the round came together quickly: “Within two weeks of starting the process, we were able to wrap it up,” the CEO wrote, adding that the investment “was heavily oversubscribed due to strong interest from both existing investors and our new investors.”

(Source – Techcrunch)

This brings Ally.io’s total funding to $73M and if I was to guess I’d imagine this current round came at a valuation north of $300M. It has become incredibly clear over the last few years that VCs are more than comfortable backing companies branding on a .IO domain, even if the .COM is completely out of reach forever, which is the case with Ally.

If you take a look at Ally.com, it’s a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

So it’s safe to say, Ally.com isn’t going to sell this domain at any price so Ally.io is going to be on Ally.io, probably forever, and I think it’s safe to say the founders and investors don’t see that holding them back at all.

Also, for those who didn’t follow the news, last year Donuts acquired Affilias in the end of 2020 which means they’re now the registry operator for .IO. I think this will continue to provide stability and trust to .IO and is why companies like Ally.io can feel comfortable making it their forever home.

Congrats to the whole team at Ally.io, next stop – Unicorn club