Embrace acquires SpeedCurve to boost user-centred observability
Embrace has acquired SpeedCurve, expanding its user-focused observability platform by integrating advanced web performance monitoring. The move brings together the expertise of both firms, aiming to provide engineering teams with a unified, comprehensive view of end-user experience by combining web, mobile real user monitoring (RUM), and synthetic testing.
Integrated insights
With this acquisition, Embrace integrates SpeedCurve's web performance insights and synthetic monitoring into its OpenTelemetry-based observability ecosystem. The approach is designed to address a longstanding gap: backend observability products have rarely offered in-depth frontend and mobile RUM, often compelling developers to juggle disparate, specialised tools that lack stack-wide integration.
The combined platform enables teams to track and analyse how every technical detail, down to millisecond-level delays and page renders, affects actual users. This holistic perspective links technical performance with user engagement and ultimately business outcomes.
Customer reach
Together, Embrace and SpeedCurve will serve almost 1,000 enterprises, including AllTrails, BBC, Business Insider, Cameo, Edmunds, Forbes, Ford, The Guardian, Gumtree, Hyatt, New York Times, and Trivago. These customers rely on both platforms to optimise the performance of mission-critical digital services and maintain responsiveness across both desktop and mobile experiences.
"The SpeedCurve team wrote the book on web performance and user engagement. Their expertise and credibility are unmatched," said Andrew Tunall, President and Chief Product Officer, Embrace.
The integration allows existing and new customers to benefit immediately. SpeedCurve users will retain full support for their current product, with additional access to emerging web RUM features being developed as part of the merger.
Technical approach
SpeedCurve has earned a reputation in web performance and reliability circles for working with standards bodies and browser vendors, and for its dual support of RUM and synthetic testing. By combining this with Embrace's OpenTelemetry integrations, the joint offering supports the creation of tailored observability workflows. Engineering teams will have access to a granular view of performance impacts, whether on platform, application, or user levels.
"For more than a decade, SpeedCurve has helped the web get faster and more human by connecting performance data to real user experience," said Mark Zeman, Founder, SpeedCurve.
Through existing collaborations with partners such as Grafana Labs, Chronosphere, and Elastic, the expanded Embrace platform aims to simplify the process of correlating user-facing performance issues with underlying technical causes, supporting both reactive troubleshooting and proactive improvement.
Strategic direction
Both Embrace and SpeedCurve have highlighted a shift towards user- and business-centric observability within the software reliability sector. As digital products become more complex and development cycles shorten, especially with the increased adoption of AI-driven tools, demand has grown for deeper, broader insight into how infrastructure and code changes impact real users in real time.
"This acquisition signals the progression of the modern observability category to include top performance solutions," said Aaron Jacobson, Partner, NEA.
