Relatively easy to learn and highly scalable, Node.js has become a very popular platform for developing apps. Now npm, a package manager that installs, publishes and manages node programs, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding, led by True Ventures, with additional participation by GoInstant.com co-founders Jevon MacDonald and Gavin Uhma, Charles Beeler, and Asynch Media, the organizers of Node Summit. True Ventures partner Puneet Agarwal will join npm’s board.
npm currently gives developers access to over 58,000 modules. Modules and packages are used by Node.js developers to quickly add new functionality to their apps, therefore saving themselves a lot of time.
Since its formation, the npm registry has grown very rapidly. There were a total of 183,235,276 downloads in January 2014 and Node.js packages now include more than one billion lines of code. The huge size of the package libraries compares to the small size of Node.js itself. The total lines of c++ and JS code, including tests, in Node.js itself is only 123,055.
The open source project and registry were originally created three years ago. Because of high demand, however, npm’s co-founders decided to form a company called npm, Inc., to better support Node.js developers. The startup officially launched in December, and its seed funding will allow npm to improve and scale up its services.
The npm registry was launched by CEO Isaac Schlueter, who formerly worked at Joyent leading its Node.js project and is also a Yahoo alum. He is joined by co-founders Laurie Voss, CTO of npm, Inc., and COO Rod Boothby.
Built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime, Node.js is used by companies including GE, Walmart, Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Joyent.
Joyent in particular has been one of the biggest advocates of Node.js and offers commercial support services like debugging and performance analysis tools for Node.js apps. Joyent co-founder Jason Hoffman, who retired from his position as the cloud computing pioneer’s CTO last fall, is also on npm’s board.
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