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§ Private Profile · San Francisco, CA, USA
Xamarin is a technology company.
Xamarin has raised $83.0M across 3 funding rounds.
Key people at Xamarin.
Xamarin was founded in 2011 by Nat Friedman (CEO and Cofounder).
Xamarin has raised $83.0M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Xamarin developed a cross-platform framework for building native mobile applications across iOS, Android, and Windows from a single C# codebase. Its technology offered a unified environment, enabling significant code reuse while providing native user interface performance and access to platform-specific functionalities. This approach streamlined development by abstracting operating system differences, promoting efficiency.
The company was founded in May 2011 by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman, engineers who emerged from the open-source Mono project team. Their entrepreneurial insight arose after Attachmate's acquisition of Novell jeopardized their ongoing work on Mono for mobile platforms. They established Xamarin to independently evolve their vision for cross-platform development, leveraging deep experience in the .NET ecosystem.
Developers worldwide utilized Xamarin to efficiently target multiple mobile platforms with shared code. The company’s vision centered on delivering a productive framework that bridged diverse mobile operating systems, enabling maximum code sharing without compromising native user experiences. This supported rapid, consistent application deployment across the mobile landscape.
Key people at Xamarin.
Xamarin has raised $83.0M across 3 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $54.0M Series C in August 2014.
Xamarin was founded in 2011 by Nat Friedman (CEO and Cofounder).
Xamarin has raised $83.0M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Xamarin's investors include Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Antler, Balderton Capital, Citi Ventures, Craft Ventures, CRV, DST Global, Floodgate, Footprint Coalition, Foundation Capital.
Xamarin is a cross-platform mobile app development framework that enables developers to build native apps for Android, iOS, and Windows using C# and .NET, sharing up to 90% of code across platforms.[1][2] It solves the problem of fragmented mobile development by allowing a single codebase with native APIs and UI controls, including Xamarin.Forms for shared user interfaces, serving over 1.4 million developers in the Microsoft ecosystem.[1][2] Originally a standalone company founded in 2011, Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in 2016, becoming open-source and integrated into Visual Studio, which boosted accessibility and growth while reducing development time and costs.[1][2]
As part of Microsoft, Xamarin powered enterprise apps but faced evolution with Microsoft's .NET MAUI announcement, prompting migrations from Xamarin.Forms by late 2021, with support extended briefly afterward.[2]
Xamarin was founded on May 16, 2011, by Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza, building on Mono—an open-source .NET implementation led by de Icaza since 2001—to create a commercial cross-platform mobile tool.[1][2] The idea emerged to simplify mobile app development using C#, targeting developers tired of platform-specific coding for iOS and Android.[1][4]
Early traction included Xamarin 2.0's 2013 release, serving 12,000 paying customers with a 40-developer team.[5] Xamarin.Forms launched that year for shared UIs.[1] Pivotal moments were Microsoft's 2016 acquisition, making it free and open-source under MIT license, and 2017 Visual Studio integration.[1][2] By 2018, Xamarin.Forms 3.0 added features like CSS styling; it remained active into 2020 within Visual Studio.[1]
Xamarin rode the 2010s explosion of mobile apps and cross-platform needs, as developers sought efficiency amid iOS/Android fragmentation.[1][2] Timing was ideal post-Mono, aligning with C#/.NET's enterprise strength and Microsoft's mobile push.[2][4]
Market forces favoring it included rising app complexity and cost pressures, where code reuse slashed expenses.[1] It influenced the ecosystem by popularizing shared-code models in the Microsoft stack, paving for .NET MAUI as successor amid hybrid/native debates—shifting focus from Xamarin to unified platforms while sustaining .NET mobile dev.[2] Xamarin boosted open-source mobile tools, inspiring competitors and empowering non-native specialists.[1][2]
Post-MAUI transition (migration targeted November 2021, with 12-month support), Xamarin evolves as a legacy bridge in Microsoft's unified .NET ecosystem, likely maintained for existing apps but de-emphasized for new builds.[2] Trends like AI-integrated dev tools, edge computing, and multi-platform (including desktop/web) will shape it via MAUI extensions.
Its influence grows indirectly through Microsoft's .NET dominance, enabling faster enterprise mobile innovation—cementing Xamarin as a foundational force in cross-platform history, much like its founding goal to democratize C# mobile dev.[1][2]