ngrok provides an AI and API gateway that securely routes, transforms, and observes traffic to services running anywhere. Founded in 2015, the company began with a focused tunneling capability that exposed local applications to public URLs, then expanded into a unified platform combining reverse proxy, firewall, API gateway, and global load balancing functionality.
The platform handles production traffic at scale and serves more than 13 million developers, from hobbyists to engineers at companies including GitHub, Okta, HashiCorp, and Twilio. ngrok operates globally distributed infrastructure serving customers in every internet-connected country. In 2022, the company raised $50 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue, following organic growth to millions of users beforehand.
The platform consolidates capabilities that developers traditionally assembled from multiple tools - nginx, network load balancers, VPNs, and model routers - into a single system. Beyond conventional API gateway functionality, ngrok addresses modern requirements around AI agent deployment and traffic observation, reflecting the evolving demands of contemporary application architecture.