Airtable

For the laboratory equipment, see air table.

Formagrid, Inc.

Type of site	Collaborative software
Founded	2012
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, US
Founder(s)	Howie Liu Andrew Ofstad Emmett Nicholas
Industry	Internet
URL	airtable.com
Registration	Required
Current status	Active

Airtable is an American cloud collaboration service company headquartered in San Francisco. It was founded in 2012 by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas.

Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid, with the features of a database but applied to a spreadsheet. The fields in an Airtable table are similar to cells in a spreadsheet, but have types such as 'checkbox', 'phone number', and 'drop-down list', and can reference file attachments like images. ^{[1] [2]}

Users can create a database, set up column types, add records, link tables to one another, collaborate, sort records and publish views to external websites. Users cannot download their database in full, but can download some of the data by manually downloading CSVs for each table. ^[3]

History

Financing

In February 2015, Airtable raised $3 million from Caffeinated Capital, Freestyle Capital, Data Collective, and CrunchFund. ^[4] In May 2015, the company secured an additional $7.6 million in funding from Charles River Ventures and Ashton Kutcher. ^[5] In March 2018, Airtable raised $52 million in Series B funding, followed by the announcement of the launch of Airtable Blocks. ^[6] In November 2018 it raised $100 million in Series C funding. ^[7] In September 2020, Airtable raised $185 million in Series D funding. ^[8] This was followed by a Series E funding round in March 2021, where Airtable secured $270 million, ^[9] led by Greenoaks with participation from WndrCo, Caffeinated Capital, CRV, and Thrive. ^[10] The company's growth culminated in December 2021 when Airtable raised $735 million in a Series F funding round, boosting its valuation to $11 billion. ^[11]

Product Changes

• April 2015: Airtable launches its API and embedded databases. ^[12]
• July 2015: Introduced Airtable Forms to collect and organize data. ^[13]
• August 2015: Airtable made "Add to Slack" option available to integrate Airtable with Slack. ^[14]
• December 2015: Airtable redesigned its iOS app. ^[15]
• December 2015: Airtable introduced barcode as new field type. ^[16]
• June 2023: Airtable launched a beta program and expanding access to Airtable AI.

Layoffs

• December 2022: Airtable CEO and co-founder Howie Liu informed employees that a fifth of them would be laid off, stating: “In trying to do too many things at once, we have grown our organization at a breakneck pace over the past few years....We will continue to emphasize growth, but do so by investing heavily in the levers that yield the highest growth relative to their cost.” ^[17]
• September 2023: Airtable lays off an additional 27% (237) of its employees. ^[18]

See also

• Cloud collaboration
• Document collaboration
• Collaborative software
• Collaborative real-time editor

References

1. "Airtable review: A drop-dead easy relational database management system". Macworld. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
2. Martin, James A. "3 ways Airtable for iOS can help you ditch spreadsheets". CIO. Archived from the original on June 27, 2018. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
3. "Airtable Technical Requirements | Airtable Support". Airtable. March 15, 2024. Retrieved June 4, 2024.
4. Lawler, Ryan (February 25, 2015). "With $3M in Funding, Airtable Makes Complex Databases Usable on Your Mobile Phone". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
5. "Airtable lands $7.6M round to help build simple, extensible database apps". VentureBeat. June 29, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
6. "Airtable Raises $52 Million and Launches Airtable Blocks..." BusinessWire. March 15, 2018. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
7. Lunden, Ingrid (November 15, 2018). "Airtable, maker of a coding platform for non-techies, raises $100M at a $1.1B valuation". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on April 15, 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
8. "Airtable raises $185M and launches new low-code and automation features". TechCrunch. September 14, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
9. "Cloud-based software company Airtable". mg21. April 20, 2021.
10. "Airtable is now valued at $5.77B with a fresh $270 million in Series E funding". TechCrunch. March 15, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2021.
11. León, Riley de (December 13, 2021). "Software start-up Airtable hits $11 billion valuation in latest funding, adds Salesforce, Michael Dell as investors". CNBC. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
12. Russell, Kyle (April 30, 2015). "Airtable Launches Its API And Embedded Databases". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
13. "Create Forms in a Snap!". Covering Bases. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
14. "Airtable and Slack: Keeping Your Team In Sync". Covering Bases. August 25, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
15. "Airtable Introduces Newly Redesigned iOS App to Make Database Creation Available to Anyone With an iPhone". Marketwire. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
16. "A Brief History of Barcodes". Covering Bases. December 23, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2016.
17. "San Francisco tech unicorn Airtable lays off a fifth of staff as multiple execs exit". December 9, 2022.
18. "'Sickening feeling': SF tech CEO blames himself as Airtable lays off more than 230 workers again". September 19, 2023.