About Team Press Legal

We started MapBox to make it easy for anyone to design and publish a beautiful custom map.

Our platform gives developers the power to make maps that embody their product and brand. MapBox helps you find bars on foursquare, search for hotels on Hipmunk, and organize notes in Evernote. With our global, autoscaling infrastructure and cross-device compatibility, integrating our maps into your apps is easy even if you have millions of users.

Over the last 3 years our team of dedicated cartographers, data analysts, and software engineers has built our entire stack using open source software and open data. We are fully bootstrapped, based in Washington, DC and San Francisco, and we're just getting started.

2011

January

MBTiles spec drafted

Tom MacWright and Justin Miller collaborate on MBTiles — a new cross-platform, offline-capable map transport format. The open spec is made available on GitHub and adopted by a wide variety of applications.

February

TileMill released

The open source map design studio allows users to create maps from custom data. Tom MacWright leads development of the CartoCSS language and UTFGrid interaction spec. The desktop suite is powered by Mapnik and node.js.

April

MapBox launched

MapBox launches its map publishing platform including custom map uploads, HTML embeds, and REST JSON API. The service is offered to enterprise users at $499/mo. Early adopters include the FCC, White House, and Department of Education.

New class of maps powered by MapBox

The World Food Programme, ONE, NPR, Energy.gov and the FCC integrate maps into their campaigns, stories, data visualizations and more.

June

CartoCSS styles for OpenStreetMap released

AJ Ashton releases CartoCSS styles for TileMill demonstrating street-level cartography using OpenStreetMap data. The styles are open source and available on GitHub.

December

MapBox expands service

Plans starting at $5 a month allow organizations of any size to afford high performance custom maps. Image compositing, detailed usage stats, and automated billing make it possible for users to sign up and publish maps immediately.

2012

January

TileMill for Windows

Dane Springmeyer pioneers cross-platform use of node.js for high performance desktop apps across Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. TileMill gains access to the MapBox open data catalog and the ability to publish maps directly to MapBox.

February

MapBox Streets launched

AJ Ashton combines beautiful clean cartography with the detail and coverage of OpenStreetMap data. MapBox develops an innovative new rendering technique for serving maps to a worldwide audience of any size with high performance and scalability.

foursquare switches to MapBox

The social location-based mobile app integrates MapBox Streets with its web application. foursquare joins the growing OpenStreetMap movement.

April

MapBox iOS SDK released

Justin Miller develops the full-featured open source MapBox iOS SDK for tight integration between MapBox and iOS apps. The developer toolkit features custom styles, vector layers, and unlimited caching for offline use.

May

Mapnik 2.1

Artem Pavlenko leads development of advanced image compositing features in Mapnik. Filters, clipping, and post-production operations add Photoshop-like image manipulation to the core rendering library of TileMill.

July

mapbox.js released

Tom MacWright and Ansis Brammanis bring together multiple open source libraries into a unified mapping API. Detailed documentation and examples make it easy for developers to dive into map integration.

August

MapBox Terrain launched

Young Hahn works with AJ Ashton to process terabytes of open elevation and landcover data. The resulting terrain imagery integrates seamlessly into MapBox Streets.

Thousands of users adopt MapBox

MapBox powers key web and mobile apps like foursquare, Evernote, Bass Pro Shops, Lanyrd, Hipmunk, The Silent History, and Weather Decision Technologies.

September

MapBox partners with Knight to improve OpenStreetMap

The Knight Foundation announces a grant of $575,000 to MapBox to improve the core infrastructure of OpenStreetMap. Alex Barth leads the MapBox team and focuses on improving editing, making the experience more social, and making it easer to get data out of OpenStreetMap.

October

Publishing from ESRI ArcGIS to MapBox

Will White works with Arc2Earth creator Brian Flood to enable ArcGIS users to publish maps directly to MapBox using Arc2Earth. The open MBTiles spec powers interoperability between ESRI tools and MapBox.

USA Today powers election night maps with MapBox

USA Today's 2012 election dashboard features live-updating maps designed for mobile and web. Dave Cole leads advanced tech that withstands torrential traffic on election night.

December

MapBox Satellite powered by open data and satellite leader Digital Globe

MapBox combines open data with hi-res imagery from commercial satellite provider Digital Globe to launch MapBox Satellite. Chris Herwig and Young Hahn lead acquisition and processing of hundreds of terabytes of open aerial imagery.

2013

February

San Francisco office space opens

Awesome office space at 9th and Folsom (working out of the Code for America space), as we're increasingly working in the Bay Area, and as our team continues to rapidly grow.

March

Le Monde switches to MapBox

Le Monde, one of the largest French newspapers, switches to French maps based on MapBox Streets. MapBox now offers maps in French, German, and Spanish, in addition to English and local languages, signaling a big push into the European market.

April

New Map Editor for OpenStreetMap

The beta for our new, fast map editor launches. Designed to make an even better, more current OpenStreetMap, the new editor makes it easy to start mapping in minutes. This work was lead out by Tom MacWright, John Firebaugh, Ansis Brammanis, Saman Bemel Benrud and Alex Barth.

April

Cloudless Atlas for MapBox Streets

The satellite team begins work on the new Cloudless Atlas for MapBox Satellite. Charlie Loyd and Chris Herwig processed years worth of satellite data to make all the clouds simply go away.
The future of mapping is open Meet the team behind MapBox
Contact us Subscribe to our newsletter

MapBox

Tour Showcase About Plans Premium Blog Status

Resources

Help Developers

Tools

TileMill Maki

Recent blog posts

Read more
Terms of service + Privacy policy © MapBox