Third -party app is known as store AltstoreOne of the first companies to offer an alternative app in the European Union, is preparing to connect its platform with the open social web, known as the Federes.
The step will connect users to other open social apps, such as Mastodon or Meta Threads, in a new way with updates of their favorite apps.
In addition, the startup is announcing its first funding round with out investors, with $ 6 million from Series A to A. Pace Capital. The deal gives the venture firm 15% equity stake in Altstore and will allow the company to appoint a team beyond its co-founders, relay Testuts and Shane Gill.
Flipboard CEO Mike Macu, a Feders Backer, is now joining the board of startups.
The founders, now located in New York, states that the new capital will help them capitalize on the capacity for the alternative app store in both the European Union and beyond because new competition laws are passed. Already, the startup plans to bring its storefront to the markets including Australia, Brazil and Japan this year. To do this, the company needed to bring more employees, which new funds now allow.
Altstore has seen a significant increase as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) of the European Union has opened competition in the App Store Market, forcing technical giants such as Apple to allow new rivals to operate new rivals. While the startup video game provides its own third party apps led by Amulator DeltaIt started adding other third-party apps in June 2024. This included the virtual machine app UTM, a trick that pressured to open his own app store to allow virtual machines on Apple.
Altstore participated in August last year with the epic Games and brought Fortnite and other mobile games to his EU Storefront, Altstore Pal. The company also entered the market this year with the decision to host an app called Hot Tub, which was the first iOS app for pornography and now its top app.
In April, Altstore began to allow developers to self-publish their apps on Altstore Pal for free, leading to further growth.
The founders of Altstore told Techcrunch that the store now has more than 100 developers on the board, which is more than the epic game offering on its alternative game store for comparison. Altstore, which is not limited to sports, attracts a wide variety of developers, including the indisies, which also want to keep apps as well as those who will not meet the strict requirements of Apple, such as its adult material restrictions.
In addition, developers such as stores support a variety of business models, whether it is more traditional membership or something where users donate for the development of the app, for example.
“We have hundreds of thousands of users,” Altstore co-founder Tstut told Techcrunch in an interview. “Amazing and good numbers.”
Now, with additional funding, Altstore is launching it Mastodon Server himself, Activitypub is running on the protocol, where users will be able to see app updates and new information from sources that they follow. Developers can choose to publish their app updates on the new server.
“This means, if you have a mastodon account or a thread account, you can follow these accounts. You can follow the source from our Mastodon Server. Then, in your timeline, you will see when the app was updated,” Testat.
Once chosen, these updates will be automated via JSON file with metadata. And whatever it will output to the Federes in all the Altstore.
“It is adding a social layer,” Testat said. “People can respond to the apps from their Mastodon account. They can prefer goods from their threads account.” (In addition, the plan is to bridge the service with the open social ecosystem on the blue, using non -profit, a new social tools.)
Service will also help with searching, as users can see servers and accounts that they host to find apps they want to try.
With additional funds, Altstore wants to give back the ecosystem that will make its social network possible.
By that end, it is giving $ 500,000 back to various projects in Federes. So far, it is donated by Mastodon Ggmbh ($ 300K), as well as fed by a new social; Ivory + Phoenix by tapbots; Tapestry by iconfactory; Mstdn.social; Akoma; Pertube; Bookwiram; And FedeFi.
