Bitmovin, the world leader in online video infrastructure software, raised $30 million in Series B funding, led by Highland Europe, to help expand its global customer base of TV streaming providers, internet companies and social media companies. The funding will enable Bitmovin to scale up its R&D, field engineering and sales teams worldwide.
Bitmovin solves complex video problems arising from the exponential increase in online video consumption through its video compression, playback and analytics APIs, making it possible to stream video in higher quality with less bandwidth while avoiding buffering and long start-up delays. Bitmovin’s customers include Sling, Periscope, The New York Times, and ProSiebenSat. 1, Red Bull Media House, FuboTV, RTL and iflix-collectively delivering thousands of videos to consumers every day.
The Investment Series B round was led by Highland Europe, with the participation of existing investors Atomico, Constantia New Business, Dawn Capital and YCombinator. The latest round brings the total investment in Bitmovin to $43 million. The company has also experienced Silicon Valley veterans as angel investors, including former Cisco CTO Ed Kozel, as well as former VP of Engineering at Netflix, founder of Gaikai, founder of Drupal, and founder of Unity3D. Bitmovin is also an alumnus of YCombinator, the world’s leading start-up accelerator.
Bitmovin has evolved from a founder’s PhD research project and has become a leader in next generation online video technology in less than five years. The company has been at the forefront of all major developments in online video-from building the world’s first commercial adaptive streaming player to deploying the first containerized encoding service to any cloud provider or data center. Bitmovin’s founders co-created the MPEG-DASH video streaming standard that Netflix and YouTube use and delivers more than 50% of total internet traffic.
Bitmovin’s technology stack provides critical building blocks for content publishers as video consumption shifts from cable and satellite TV to online video consumed on any device at any time. Cisco predicts that 80% of the total internet traffic will be made up of video by 2021. Recent innovations include being the first to support the AV1 video compression standard (a new royalty-free codec supported by Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Samsung) and adding artificial intelligence to video encoding. This resulted in industry-wide recognition for Bitmovin, including being selected as Best of NAB by Streaming Media Magazine and appearing regularly in Streaming Media’s Top 100 companies that matter most in online video.
“As the shift to streaming approaches the tipping point and becomes the dominant format for consuming sports, news, movies and drama, Bitmovin is addressing an unprecedented market opportunity,” says Fergal Mullen, Partner at Highland Europe. “With video now critical to all social media platforms, as well as to many more internet companies and increasingly corporate and educational companies, Stefan and his team are set to shape the future of video technology. “That’s right.
“Our mission is to provide the infrastructure layer for all video on the Internet, a market that combines traditional media customers and Internet companies that transform into video companies,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin. “In our view, in the future, every internet company will be a video company, which is a great opportunity for Bitmovin to be an integral part of the internet infrastructure. “That’s right.
“Bitmovin allows us to iterate our video technology faster than any other provider on the market. Its API is the most robust and developer-friendly and offers a support model that allows our developers to work extremely closely together. It simply provides the best-in-class video technology that allows us to continue delivering the highest quality streaming service to our subscribers,” said Sung Ho Choi, co-founder of fuboTV.
On Bitmovin
Bitmovin is the world’s leading provider of video infrastructure for online media companies. The company has been at the forefront of all major developments in online video-from building the world’s first commercial adaptive streaming player to deploying the first software-defined encoding service to any cloud provider or data center. Bitmovin works with media companies around the globe to build innovative video products. Please visit www to find out more. Bitmovin’s Come on,
Highland Europe
Highland Europe is investing in fast-growing European internet, mobile and software companies that address large market opportunities. Launched in 2012 and with more than €580m ($640m) of capital raised through two funds, the company originated as the European operations of Highland Capital Partners, U. Oh, S Venture Capital Company Highland Europe is based in London and Geneva, and its current portfolio includes GetYourGuide, Featureespace, ContentSquare, Malwarebytes, Wetransfer, Nexthink, AMCS and Matchesfashion, among many others.
Please note that this piece of work originally appeared in English at https://www.vcnewsdaily.com/Bitmovin/venture-funding.php. As Investocracy aims to bring global startup news and updates in both English and Japanese to you, it’s important that we attribute original source to you. If you have any questions/concerns please write to us at contact@investocracy.co
