MuleSource, as the company was originally called, was founded by Ross Mason and Dave Rosenberg in 2006. The company was built around the successful Open Source Software (OSS) project,
Mule, which Ross Mason founded in 2003. The "mule" in the name comes from the drudgery, or "donkey work," of data and application integration that the platform was created to escape.The company changed its name to MuleSoft in 2009. MuleSoft originally provided
middleware and messaging, and later expanded to provide an
integration platform as a service (iPaaS) approach for companies through its main product, Anypoint Platform. In April 2013, the company announced $37 million in
Series E financing in a round led by
New Enterprise Associates, with participation from new strategic investor
Salesforce.com, and existing investors
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures,
Lightspeed Venture Partners, Meritech Capital Partners,
Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) and Bay Partners. This brought MuleSoft's total financing, over the course of seven rounds, to $259 million. In April 2013, MuleSoft acquired
ProgrammableWeb, a website used by developers to help build web, mobile and other connected applications through APIs. In February 2017, the company filed for an
IPO, and began trading on the
New York Stock Exchange on March 17, 2017. In May 2018,
Salesforce.com bought MuleSoft in a deal reported to be worth $6.5 billion. ==Products==