The company was built around the successful Open Source Software (OSS) project, Mule, which Ross Mason founded in 2003.

The "mule" in the name comes from the drudgery, or "donkey work," of data and application integration that the platform was created to escape.

[9] In April 2013, MuleSoft acquired ProgrammableWeb, a website used by developers to help build web, mobile and other connected applications through APIs.

[13] In March 2018, Salesforce.com announced it was buying MuleSoft in a deal reported to be worth $6.5 billion;[14][15] the acquisition was completed in May of that year.

[17] MuleSoft also offers the Mule runtime engine for connecting enterprise applications on-premises and to the cloud, designed to eliminate the need for custom point-to-point integration code.