Liveblocks Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated real-time collaboration infrastructure company founded in 2021 by Guillaume Salles and Steven Fabre.
The platform provides ready-made APIs and React/JavaScript primitives for multiplayer presence, cursors, comments, threads, notifications, text editor synchronization (Yjs and Slate), and conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs) - turning the hard distributed-systems work behind Figma-style collaboration into a managed service for any application.
Operational headquarters are remote-first with team distribution across Europe and North America. Liveblocks raised a 4 million US dollar seed round in 2022, an 8 million US dollar Series A in 2023, and a 15 million US dollar Series B led by Boldstart and Resonant in 2024, bringing total funding above 27 million US dollars.
Customers include Maze, Browserbase, Tella, Sanity, and a long tail of SaaS products adding multiplayer features. The legal entity is Liveblocks Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation with its registered agent at the Corporation Trust Center in Wilmington.
Liveblocks is a Series-B dev-tools infrastructure Delaware C-Corp with a partly-open structure: the React, JavaScript, and language-specific SDK packages on npm are released under Apache 2.0, while the cloud control plane, the WebSocket gateway, the CRDT merge engine, and the multi-tenant infrastructure remain closed source.
The capital stack is conventional Delaware preferred-stock: pre-seed and seed SAFEs in 2021-2022, priced 4 million US dollar seed extension in 2022 with full preferred-stock terms (some seed rounds skip directly to priced rather than SAFE - depends on lead investor preference), priced Series A in 2023, priced Series B in 2024 led by Boldstart Ventures and Resonant.
Each priced round issued a new series of convertible preferred stock with 1x non-participating liquidation preference, weighted-average anti-dilution, pro rata rights for the lead, and standard NVCA voting/IRA/ROFR documentation.
The option pool was refreshed at each priced round; common holders bear dilution pre-money, with typical 8-12 percent dilution per round between fresh issuance and pool top-up. The 409A valuation is refreshed annually and after each material round, with common stock priced at a 25-35 percent discount to the latest preferred for a Series-B-stage company.
Liveblocks does not have super-voting founder shares - far too early to pre-position for an IPO.
The partly-open licensing strategy serves dual purposes: the SDKs need to be permissively licensed for developer adoption (corporate legal teams reject AGPL on client SDKs by default), while the closed-source server side preserves the commercial moat. A Contributor License Agreement covers SDK contributions; CIIAA covers all employee work.
Trademarks (the Liveblocks wordmark and logo) are USPTO-registered to Liveblocks Inc.
Delaware is the only sensible jurisdiction: every institutional VC writes preferred-stock terms assuming Delaware default rules, the Chancery court has decided every preferred-stock dispute imaginable, QSBS Section 1202 requires a domestic C-Corp, and the eventual exit will be cleaner from a Delaware C-Corp than from any alternative.
Both patterns are common at seed. Pure SAFEs (YC-style) work well when round sizes are under 3 million US dollars and the lead investor is an angel or accelerator. Priced seed rounds become more common as round sizes climb above 3 million US dollars or when sophisticated leads want full preferred-stock protections (liquidation preference, anti-dilution, pro rata, board seat) earlier.
Liveblocks raised a priced 4 million US dollar seed extension, which gave investors immediate preferred-stock protections but cost more in legal fees (30-60k US dollars versus under 1k for a SAFE).
Real-time infrastructure companies need to raise institutional venture to fund the WebSocket gateway, the CRDT engine, and the multi-region distributed systems work, and US venture requires Delaware. The Chancery court has the deepest preferred-stock case law in the US. QSBS Section 1202 treatment requires a domestic C-Corporation, which Delaware is the natural default for.
Wyoming's LLC privacy is irrelevant once an institutional cap table is filed, and a pre-Series-A redomicile costs legal fees and resets the QSBS five-year clock.
Release client SDKs (React, JavaScript, language bindings) under Apache 2.0 or MIT - permissive licenses are essential for SDK adoption because corporate legal teams reject copyleft licenses on client code by default. Keep the WebSocket gateway, the CRDT merge engine, the multi-tenant control plane, and the storage layer closed source.
A Contributor License Agreement governs SDK contributions and grants the Delaware C-Corp broad relicensing rights. The C-Corp owns all trademarks (USPTO-registered) and core IP.
Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff is universal. By Series B, founder vesting from incorporation may be partly complete, but any new options or RSUs granted at Series B carry their own four-year vesting schedule. Double-trigger acceleration on change of control - acquisition plus involuntary termination within 12 months - is the standard Boldstart and Resonant term sheet.
83(b) elections within 30 days of restricted stock issuance remain mandatory; failure to file forces ordinary-income tax on each vesting tranche, which can cost millions.
