Supabase Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated backend-as-a-service company founded in 2020 by Paul Copplestone and Ant Wilson. The platform bundles a managed Postgres database with auth, storage, real-time subscriptions, vector embeddings, edge functions, and a Studio dashboard - positioned as an open-source alternative to Google's Firebase.
Every component is released under permissive licenses (Apache 2.0, MIT, PostgreSQL) and the entire stack can be self-hosted, but the commercial offering is a managed cloud running on AWS with auto-scaling, branching, point-in-time recovery, and SOC 2 compliance baked in. Operational headquarters are fully remote with no central office, and the team spans more than 30 countries.
Supabase has raised more than 196 million US dollars across seed, A, B, and C rounds, with the 80 million US dollar Series C in 2024 led by Felicis. Customers include Mozilla, GitHub, PwC, 1Password, and tens of thousands of Y Combinator startups. The legal entity is a Delaware C-Corporation registered in 2020.
Supabase is the canonical open-core Delaware C-Corp - a structure that has become standard for developer-infrastructure startups since GitLab and Mongo proved the model. The open-source side comprises supabase/supabase, supabase/postgres-meta, supabase/realtime, supabase/storage-api, supabase/auth, and dozens of supporting repositories, all governed by an Apache 2.0 / MIT license matrix.
The proprietary side is the multi-tenant control plane that manages tens of thousands of customer Postgres instances, the billing system, the branching infrastructure, and the SOC 2 audit trail.
Supabase Inc. owns all trademarks (the wordmark and the green-lightning logo) and uses a Contributor License Agreement to gather copyright assignments from external contributors, which means the company can relicense if commercial pressure ever requires it - exactly what HashiCorp and Elastic did when AWS forking became existential.
Supabase's capital stack is conventional Delaware: SAFEs at YC and pre-seed, priced Series A through C with non-participating 1x liquidation preference and pro rata rights, separate option pool refreshed at each round.
The 409A valuation is updated post-round and after any material business event; common stock is priced at a meaningful discount to the most recent preferred round, typically 20-35 percent for a Series B/C company, allowing the company to grant options at strikes that are attractive to candidates.
There are no publicly known super-voting founder shares - the company has not pre-positioned for an IPO with dual-class structure, which is consistent with a Series C company still focused on growth.
Delaware is the only realistic choice for an open-core company raising US venture: it provides the share-class flexibility, the predictable case law, the QSBS-compatible C-Corp form, and crucially the privacy that lets a remote-first company keep its founders' home addresses out of public filings (Delaware does not require disclosure of officer addresses, only the registered agent's).
YC standardizes on its post-money SAFE for the YC check itself and for most subsequent seed checks up to roughly 5 million US dollars. SAFEs convert at the next priced round at the better of the cap or the discount, and Supabase followed exactly this pattern: YC SAFE, then additional SAFEs, then a priced Series A.
The advantage is speed and low legal cost (a SAFE closes in days for under 1k US dollars; a priced round takes weeks and 30-60k). The risk is conversion stacking - if you raise too much on SAFEs you can be surprised by the dilution at the Series A.
Open-source companies need to raise institutional venture to fund the proprietary commercial layer that monetizes the OSS, and US venture capital insists on Delaware. The General Corporation Law's Section 102(b)(7) exculpation, the Chancery court's sophisticated treatment of preferred-stock disputes, and the QSBS-compatible C-Corp form all matter.
Wyoming's LLC privacy is irrelevant once you have institutional investors who require disclosure on the cap table anyway, and the eventual conversion to Delaware costs legal fees and resets the QSBS holding clock.
Permissive licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0) allow customers and competitors to use, modify, and resell the software, which forces the company to compete on operational excellence rather than license terms. AGPL closes the ASP loophole and forces SaaS competitors to release their modifications. BSL (Business Source License) prohibits commercial use for a fixed term before converting to Apache 2.0.
The legal entity is unaffected by any of these choices - all run fine in a Delaware C-Corp - but the commercial moat differs sharply, which affects fundraising narrative and valuation.
Universal standard is four-year vesting with a one-year cliff, with double-trigger acceleration on change of control. Founders should file 83(b) elections within 30 days of receiving restricted stock to lock in capital-gains treatment.
Repurchase rights at fair market value let the company reclaim unvested shares if a founder leaves - this is non-negotiable in any institutional round and should be drafted at incorporation rather than retrofitted later, when negotiating leverage with co-founders is gone.
