Fastly

Fastly, Inc.

Company type	Public
Industry	Cloud computing, Content delivery network, Cybersecurity
Founded	2011 (2011)
Founder	Artur Bergman
Headquarters	San Francisco , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Todd Nightingale (CEO), Ronald W. Kisling (CFO), Artur Bergman (Chief Architect and Executive Chairperson)
Products	Content delivery network services, image optimization, load balancing, cloud security solutions (DDoS protection, bot defense, web application firewall)
Website	www.fastly.com

Fastly, Inc. is a cloud computing enterprise based in San Francisco, United States. It focuses on delivering content delivery network (CDN) services, optimizing images, balancing loads, and providing cloud security solutions such as protection against denial-of-service attacks, bot defense, and web application firewalls.

Establishment and Public Offering (2011–2019)

Founded in 2011 by Swedish-American entrepreneur and ex-Wikia CTO Artur Bergman, Fastly rapidly attracted investment to grow its CDN infrastructure. The company secured $10 million during its Series B funding in 2013 and acquired CDN Sumo in 2014 to integrate with Heroku. By 2015, it had completed Series C and D funding rounds raising $40 million and $75 million respectively. Among its strategic alliances was a 2015 partnership with Google aimed at enhancing content delivery via Google Cloud.

In 2017, Fastly introduced its edge cloud platform, which incorporated advanced features like improved image optimization, load balancing, and web application firewall capabilities. Additional capital was raised through funding rounds of $50 million in 2017 and $40 million in 2018 to support technological advancement and expansion.

Fastly filed for an initial public offering in April 2019 and officially began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 17, 2019, marking a pivotal step in its corporate development and market expansion.

Leadership under Joshua Bixby (2020–2022)

In February 2020, Artur Bergman transitioned from CEO to the roles of chief architect and executive chairperson, with Joshua Bixby stepping in as the new CEO.

August 2020 saw Fastly broaden its cybersecurity portfolio by acquiring Signal Sciences for $775 million, paid through a combination of $200 million in cash and $575 million in stock.

Ronald W. Kisling, previously Fitbit’s CFO under Alphabet, was appointed Fastly’s CFO in June 2021, succeeding Adriel Lares.

On June 8, 2021, Fastly encountered a major CDN service disruption impacting prominent sites such as Reddit, Amazon, and key news platforms. The outage was linked to a software defect triggered by a specific user configuration and was rectified within several hours.

In May 2022, Fastly expanded its developer-oriented offerings by acquiring Glitch—a web development platform with over 1.8 million users—thus strengthening its cloud services business.

Todd Nightingale’s Tenure as CEO (2022–Present)

Todd Nightingale, formerly Executive Vice President of Enterprise Networking and Cloud at Cisco, took over as Fastly’s CEO in August 2022, replacing Joshua Bixby.

Fastly enhanced its product lineup by acquiring domain status API provider Domainr in August 2023. Later that year in November, Chief Revenue Officer Brett Shirk resigned; Scott Lovett was named his successor six months afterward.

In August 2024, Fastly implemented an 11% reduction of its global workforce as part of cost-saving measures. Subsequently that year, the company issued $150 million in convertible senior notes carrying a 7.75% yield as part of a significant debt restructuring initiative.

Operation

Fastly’s CDN utilizes a reverse proxy architecture that directs web traffic through its servers while caching content retrieved from origin servers to minimize latency. This design enables efficient delivery by serving data from the closest point of presence to end users. The platform further supports intelligent web caching mechanisms.

Supporting modern protocols such as UDP-based HTTP/3, Fastly facilitates secure transmission of DRM protected content through encryption methods and token-based access control systems.

Built upon the Varnish platform technology, Fastly manages data throughput reaching up to 336 Tbps as of 2024.

In March 2023, Fastly expanded its partner ecosystem by making all network services alongside web application security products accessible to partners—broadening market penetration beyond previously limited offerings like its web application firewall.