In the six years since launching, Fastly Inc. has evolved from a low-key startup to a major force in content delivery with a run rate of over $100 million. Now, the provider is going after a new goal: achieving profitability.

Fastly will carry out its plans using a fresh $50 million that it has raised through a newly announced financing round led by Sorenson Capital. Other notable contributors include Sapphire Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Iconiq Capital, which lists the likes of Mark Zuckerberg among its clients.

The consortium is banking that Fastly can outmaneuver the better-established players in the content delivery market with its “edge cloud platform.” The service implements the same basic principles as the competition, allowing companies to store copies of website content around the world for faster loading, but sets itself apart with several features designed to streamline operations.

One of Fastly’s biggest selling points is an application programming interface that provides fine-grained control over how content is delivered. Companies can build their web services to automatically make adjustments through the API in response to certain events. A retailer, for instance, could have the cached copies of its online storefront refreshed when a new promotion is available to prevent users from loading an old version and missing out.

Fastly can update old content in milliseconds across all the different edge locations that a company uses. The platform’s speed is another important differentiator for the startup, but it’s being increasingly contested by rivals. Cloudflare Inc., for example, last week launched a service called Argo that routes traffic between its data centers through dedicated network links to reduce latency. 

Today’s funding should go a long way toward helping Fastly maintain an edge. The startup will invest the capital in driving revenue growth. It has already seen annualized sales double over the past two quarters on the back of deals with The New York Times, Airbnb Inc., Spotify AB and other major brands.

Image: Fastly