Better Auth started in an Addis Ababa bedroom with a stubborn problem. Its founder, Bereket Engida, a self-taught developer, was tired of relying on expensive, opaque services like Auth0 and Firebase to handle the messy, critical job of user signups and logins.
So he built an open-source tool that lets developers embed customisable authentication directly into their own code — and kept all the data where it belonged, in their database.
Today, that tiny project has become one of the fastest-rising developer platforms out of Africa. After gaining 150,000 weekly downloads and 15,000 stars on GitHub, Better Auth has just announced a USD 5 M seed round led by Peak XV, with Y Combinator, Chapter One, and P1 Ventures also joining in. It’s the biggest bet yet on an Ethiopian founder tackling global developer infrastructure.
“This funding fuels the next phase of Better Auth,” reads the company’s announcement. “We wanted to prove that you can build global infrastructure out of Africa,” Engida said in an earlier interview with Addis Insight.
The appeal is obvious. In an era when cybersecurity and privacy concerns dominate, Better Auth is a shot across the bow of hosted services that treat user data like a commodity.
Its TypeScript-based framework gives developers a modular way to implement advanced sign-in, role-based access, and session management, making it ideal for early-stage AI startups and SaaS platforms that want to control their own data and save costs.
For Engida, a programmer who started coding after a friend declined to help him build an e‑commerce search tool, this went beyond making a better login as he set out to reshape an industry that treats access and authentication as a bottleneck.
Better Auth’s approach is rooted in a very specific frustration. “I remember needing an organisation feature. It’s a very common use case for most SaaS applications, but it wasn’t available from these providers,” Engida told TechCrunch.
“So I had to build it from scratch. It took me about two weeks, and I remember thinking, ‘This is crazy; there has to be a better way to solve this.’” So he started coding. And when he posted it to GitHub in September 2024, it quickly caught the attention of developers.
In six months, it went from a fledgling GitHub repo to a bustling library with a dedicated following of over 6,000 developers. Its open source core allows teams to self‑host or pick from plug‑and‑play enterprise add‑ons. That approach has started resonating far beyond its Ethiopian roots, making it the first African-led investment for Peak XV.
“Better Auth’s auth product has seen phenomenal adoption among the next generation of AI startups,” said Peak XV partner Arnav Sahu.
Fresh off a stint in Y Combinator, Engida and his co‑founder Kinfe Michael Tariku now have Silicon Valley backing and a global roadmap. The seed funding will help hire a small engineering team, deepen enterprise tooling, and build a seamless experience for developers wary of vendor lock‑in.
At a time when digital trust is under siege and the cost of relying on Big Tech platforms is rising, this Ethiopian upstart is making the case that the best foundation for a connected world can come from anywhere.
For Engida, it’s still early days. “There’s so much more to build,” the founders note. But in a global market tired of compromises, Better Auth may already be the right tool at the right time.
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