Ethiopian Dev’s Auth Tool Better Auth Secures $5M From Peak XV & YC
▼ Summary
– Bereket Engida, a self-taught Ethiopian programmer, is the solo founder behind Better Auth, an open-source authentication tool praised by developers.
– Better Auth recently raised $5 million in seed funding from investors like Peak XV, Y Combinator, and P1 Ventures.
– Engida built the entire product in Ethiopia before moving to the U.S., addressing authentication challenges he encountered in previous projects.
– Better Auth offers a flexible, open-source solution that lets developers manage authentication directly on their databases, avoiding third-party data storage.
– The tool has gained traction with 150,000+ weekly downloads and is particularly popular among AI startups needing scalable, customizable authentication.
A self-taught Ethiopian developer has built an open-source authentication tool that’s winning over engineers worldwide, securing $5 million in funding from top-tier investors like Peak XV and Y Combinator. Bereket Engida, the solo founder behind Better Auth, created the framework to solve persistent frustrations developers face with existing authentication solutions.
Engida’s journey began in Ethiopia when he couldn’t find a suitable authentication tool for his projects. Existing options like Auth0 and Firebase either lacked flexibility, locked user data externally, or became prohibitively expensive at scale. Determined to fix this, he spent six months coding from his bedroom, eventually releasing Better Auth as an open-source TypeScript library. The framework allows developers to handle authentication flows, from basic logins to complex role-based permissions, directly within their own infrastructure, avoiding third-party dependencies.
The response was explosive. Within months, Better Auth amassed over 150,000 weekly downloads, 15,000 GitHub stars, and a thriving Discord community of 6,000 developers. Its appeal lies in its simplicity: engineers can implement sophisticated authentication with just a few lines of code while retaining full control over user data. This has made it particularly popular among AI startups, which often need custom, scalable solutions without vendor lock-in.
Investors took notice. Peak XV, formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, led the $5 million seed round alongside Y Combinator, marking its first direct investment in an African founder. “The adoption among AI startups was impossible to ignore,” said Arnav Sahu, a partner at Peak XV.
Despite the funding, Engida remains hands-on, writing most of the code himself while planning to expand the team. Better Auth will remain free for developers, with paid enterprise features launching later to support larger deployments. The startup recently graduated from Y Combinator, becoming only the third Ethiopian company to do so.
For Engida, the mission goes beyond technology. “This proves that ambitious global products can come from anywhere,” he said. “If an Ethiopian founder can build something developers love worldwide, it opens doors for others to think bigger.”
(Source: TechCrunch)
