Peer5, a peer-to-peer CDN whose goal is to make video streaming as scalable and cost-efficient as broadcast TV, announced today that the company has raised a $2.5 million seed funding round. Based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, Peer5 augments traditional server-based CDN services by dynamically creating peer-to-peer mesh networks consisting of viewers who are streaming the same video and enabling these viewers to share video content with each other. This novel approach can increase a broadcaster's video delivery capacity by up to 100x while also enhancing geographic coverage and reducing content delivery costs. Investors include FundersClub, Oriza Ventures, Tank Hill Ventures and Leorsa Group.

"We believe that this is the beginning of a massive technology shift in the TV industry," said Hadar Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Peer5. "Broadcasters around the world want to stream more but the traditional server-centric architecture for delivering video streams simply can't support TV-sized audiences. Because server capacity is fixed at any given moment, the more people that try to watch a stream, the fewer delivery resources there are for any single viewer, resulting in poor stream quality and buffering for the most popular content."


Peer5 flips the script with its peer-to-peer solution; delivery capacity actually increases in real-time as more viewers join the stream. This means that every single viewer has access to the same (or even greater) delivery resources as audience size grows. With only two lines of Javascript, broadcasters can instantly integrate Peer5 into their existing CDN infrastructure and start realizing the benefits of a hybrid server / peer-to-peer solution.

Peer5 uses WebRTC to create the peer-to-peer connections between viewers. Invented by Google in 2011, WebRTC has since been incorporated into the HTML5 standard and is now available on every major browser platform, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari. This means that viewers don't have to install any plugins to participate in a Peer5 mesh network.

Broadcasters that are already using Peer5 include Dailymotion and Artear, the digital arm of Grupo Clarin, Argentina's largest media conglomerate. With demand for streaming services growing exponentially in every region, the company expects to quickly surpass its current record of 1 million concurrent viewers for a live event - and will use the funding to grow its engineering and sales teams with the goal of reaching 10 million concurrent viewers within the next year.

Although many broadcasters might not currently be familiar with the concept of a peer-to-peer CDN, Weiss believes that's already beginning to change and will only accelerate as more and more content is delivered online instead of through cable and satellite set-top boxes. "Over time, as TV continues its online transition, peer-to-peer CDNs like Peer5 will simply be mandatory!"


About Peer5 Peer5 operates a WebRTC-based peer-to-peer content delivery network (CDN) for massively-scaled video streaming. Peer5 turns the peak demand issue into an advantage - the more users that watch, the more effective the streaming becomes for everybody. By increasing our customers' streaming capacity by a factor of up to 100x, Peer5 ensures perfect video playback with no buffering for millions of viewers every day.