Fastly

Fastly was an edge cloud computing company that provided content delivery network (CDN) services, edge computing, and security solutions. Founded by Artur Bergman, the company differentiated itself through a developer-first approach, offering programmable edge computing through its Compute@Edge platform and real-time analytics that competitors like Akamai and Cloudflare didn't provide. Fastly went public in May 2019 and became a COVID-era darling as internet traffic surged. The company's stock soared from $21 at IPO to over $130 in October 2020, giving Fastly a market cap exceeding $10 billion. But the rocket ride was built on a fragile foundation. Fastly's largest customer — widely reported to be TikTok — represented a dangerously large portion of revenue. When TikTok began diversifying its CDN providers and optimizing costs in 2021, Fastly's revenue growth collapsed. The company disclosed that one customer (unnamed but understood to be TikTok) accounted for approximately 12% of revenue — and its reduction in spending created a significant shortfall. The stock plummeted from $130 to under $10 by 2023, a decline of over 90%. Fastly also faced the fundamental challenge of CDN commoditization. Cloudflare, which had a broader product suite and freemium model, captured developer mindshare. AWS CloudFront, Azure CDN, and Google Cloud CDN offered bundled CDN with cloud services. Fastly's premium pricing and developer-focused positioning couldn't sustain revenue growth when the underlying service was being commoditized. Despite multiple restructuring efforts and CEO changes, Fastly has been unable to return to growth. The company's market cap in 2024 sits at a fraction of its $10B peak.