What ZeroC does

ZeroC, Inc. is a privately held, Delaware-incorporated software company headquartered in Jupiter, Florida, that develops and publishes RPC (Remote Procedure Call) frameworks and networking tools for software developers. Its flagship products are Ice, an all-in-one solution for building networked applications with RPC, publish/subscribe messaging, and server deployment, and IceRPC, a next-generation RPC framework built natively for the QUIC protocol with bidirectional streaming, async/await support, and Protobuf integration. Supporting services include IceStorm and DataStorm (pub/sub), IceGrid (location and activation), Glacier2 (firewall traversal), IceBridge, and IceBox (service container), alongside Slice, an Interface Definition Language and serialization format shared across both frameworks. The company supports bindings for C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Swift across Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android.

ZeroC operates a dual-licensing business model: Ice is freely available under the GPLv2 open-source license, and commercial licenses are sold via direct, quote-based engagements — typically multi-year contracts — to enterprises that need to ship Ice-based software without GPLv2 copyleft obligations. Distribution is largely self-serve via direct website download, GitHub, APT, Homebrew, WinGet, and DockerHub, while enterprise sales are handled through direct outreach. The company is bootstrapped, with no disclosed venture capital, private equity, or institutional investment, and is staffed by a small team of seven listed members led by President Bernard Normier and Vice President Marc Laukien.

Its customer base is concentrated in regulated and engineering-intensive enterprises, including UniCredit, Lombard Odier (financial services), Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, L3 Harris (aerospace and defense), BMW, Etas (automotive), GE Healthcare (medical), HP, Cengage Gale, Indra, Light & Wonder, Geomant, and A+W. The firm’s growth posture is steady-state: it continues to ship product updates (Ice 3.8.1 in March 2026 and Ice 3.8.2 in June 2026, plus the IceRPC launch), but shows no signs of external fundraising, aggressive hiring, or geographic expansion beyond its Jupiter, Florida office.

Name

ZeroC

Legal name

ZeroC, Inc.

Website

https://zeroc.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

ZeroC, Inc. is a privately held, bootstrapped software company that develops and publishes dual-licensed RPC frameworks — Ice and IceRPC — and the Slice IDL for distributed-systems developers, serving enterprise customers in defense, banking, automotive, and healthcare.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Jupiter

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Open Source (GPLv2): Ice is available under the GPLv2 open source license free of charge. This allows users to build commercially licensed software, closed-source free software, App Store apps, and open-source software.
2. Commercial License: Traditional software license for Ice without GPLv2 copyleft requirements. Offered as quote-based pricing for enterprise customers needing to distribute Ice-based software under proprietary terms.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

ZeroC develops and publishes two main RPC frameworks — Ice (an all-in-one solution for building networked applications with RPC, pub/sub, and server deployment) and IceRPC (a next-generation RPC framework built for QUIC with bidirectional streaming, async/await, and Protobuf support). The company also developed Slice, a computer language and serialization format (Interface Definition Language) used by both frameworks, and offers related services such as IceGrid, IceStorm, DataStorm, Glacier2, IceBridge, and IceBox.

Product overview

ZeroC offers a suite of open-source RPC (Remote Procedure Call) frameworks and networking tools. The core product is Ice, an all-in-one solution for distributed systems providing RPC, pub/sub messaging, and server deployment. IceRPC is the next-generation successor built for QUIC protocol with modern async/await and Protobuf support. Slice is the associated Interface Definition Language (IDL) and serialization format. Supporting services include IceStorm (pub/sub), IceGrid (location/activation), Glacier2 (firewall routing), IceBridge (bridging), IceBox (service container), and DataStorm (advanced pub/sub). The products support multiple programming languages including C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Swift.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Ice: An all-in-one solution for creating networked applications with RPC, pub/sub, server deployment, and more. Ice was historically an acronym for Internet Communications Engine.
• IceRPC
• Slice

Products and services

• Ice An all-in-one framework for creating networked applications with RPC (Remote Procedure Call), pub/sub messaging, and server deployment capabilities. A complete solution for distributed systems, available under GPLv2 open source and a commercial license.
• IceRPC The next generation RPC framework built for QUIC protocol, featuring bidirectional streaming, first-class async/await support, and native Protobuf serialization. Marketed as the future of RPC frameworks.
• Slice A computer language and serialization format that serves as the Interface Definition Language (IDL) used by both Ice and IceRPC. Allows developers to define application interfaces in a language-neutral way.
• IceStorm An efficient publish/subscribe service for Ice applications, acting as a mediator between publishers and subscribers for disseminating information to multiple recipients.
• IceGrid A location and activation service for Ice applications, providing location service, on-demand server activation, replication and load balancing, sessions and resource allocation, automatic failover, dynamic queries, status monitoring, and administration.
• Glacier2 A firewall traversal and routing service for Ice applications, enabling secure callbacks and communication through firewalls and NAT.
• IceBridge A bridging service for Ice applications enabling interoperability between different Ice configurations.
• IceBox A service container framework for hosting multiple Ice services within a single process.
• DataStorm A modern data distribution service providing topic-based pub/sub messaging with topic discovery via multicast, configurable sample lifetime and discarding policies, and priority-based routing.

Named customers14 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature9 records

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• gRPC (Google): Google's open-source RPC framework is the most direct competitor to Ice/IceRPC. It offers cross-language client/server RPC, Protobuf integration, and broad cloud-native ecosystem support (Kubernetes, Istio), directly targeting the same developer use case as ZeroC.
• Apache Thrift: Apache-governed RPC framework originally developed at Facebook with IDL-based code generation across 25+ languages. Competes head-to-head with Ice in cross-language distributed systems development.
• Protocol Buffers (Google): Google's IDL and binary serialization format, which IceRPC now integrates with natively. Competes with ZeroC's Slice language as the de facto schema/serialization layer for RPC systems.
• Cap'n Proto: Open-source data interchange format and RPC system created by Kenton Varda (ex-Google Protobuf lead). Competes with Ice/IceRPC as a high-performance, zero-copy RPC and serialization alternative.

Broad incumbents

• Apache Kafka (Apache Software Foundation): Distributed pub/sub messaging platform used for event-driven architectures. Overlaps with ZeroC's IceStorm and DataStorm pub/sub services, but at much larger scale and broader enterprise footprint.
• Microsoft WCF (.NET): Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation provides service-oriented RPC and messaging for .NET. Historical alternative to Ice in enterprise .NET environments, now in maintenance mode.

Emerging players

• NATS (Synadia): Lightweight, high-performance messaging system with subject-based pub/sub. Competes with DataStorm in distributed pub/sub use cases, particularly in cloud-native and edge environments.
• Akka (Lightbend): Reactive distributed systems framework for JVM/Scala with actor-based messaging and clustering. Competes with Ice in building distributed, networked applications, especially for JVM-centric enterprises.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/zeroc
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/zeroc-inc

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about ZeroC