Venture Capital News: Restream Grabs $50M Series A Funding
2020-08-27
AUSTIN, TX, Restream, the leading multiplatform live streaming solution, today announced it has raised $50 million in Series A financing.
The round was led by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners. In addition, Restream is launching Restream Studio, a broadcasting production center that makes live streaming across social platforms as easy as hosting a Zoom call. Restream will use the new capital to expand the company's product offerings and continue to grow its global footprint, following 300 percent growth since January. Paul Levine, Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, and Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners, will also join Restream's board of directors.
Restream Studio enables businesses to broadcast live content from the cloud to millions of viewers across more than 30 social platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube. Creators are able to brand content by adding overlays, logos and watermarks, as well as use Restream Chat and Analytics to engage with their community in real time.
Alex Khuda, co-founder and CEO of Restream: "As the world shifts entirely to online and virtual, live streaming has become an essential way for creators and brands to engage their communities around the world. This year, we've seen our growth skyrocket. Live streaming is now critical to every organization's social media strategy. Our mission has always been to make it super easy to go live on all your social platforms and with this new investment, we will continue to bring new, powerful solutions like Studio to market to support our quickly growing community of creators and businesses."
Restream has a community of more than 2 million live streamers broadcasting an average of 8 million live streams per month. In April 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) streamed the One World: Together at Home charity concert via Restream and on television networks worldwide, drawing more than 270 million viewers. As of July 2020, broadcasters using Restream have reached more than 750 million monthly views, a more than 300 percent increase since January.
PAUL LEVINE, PARTNER AT SAPPHIRE VENTURES: "Long before remote work and life became the norm, Restream's multistreaming platform had become essential to many creators, companies, entertainers, influencers and anyone that needs to broadcast to wide audiences across social channels such as Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more. In just a few years, co-founders Alex Khuda and Andrew Surzynskyi built a product that's become a valuable tool for content creators and marketers to maximize the audience for their live video. Accelerated by COVID, I believe Restream has a significant market opportunity, and I'm excited to partner together on the journey ahead."
TEDDIE WARDI, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT INSIGHT PARTNERS: "Restream's 300% growth since January illustrates the value of their software for Fortune 500 companies to be able to communicate directly to their audiences in today's virtual world. Starting with the gaming community, Alex and Andrew quickly recognized the potential for Restream's technology to engage audiences in a variety of settings and scale their platform globally. Now, with their suite of leading-edge streaming tools such as schedule, chat, and analytics, global brands and content creators are able to seamlessly connect and communicate with their audiences. We are excited to partner with Restream at this exciting time as they launch Restream Studio and continue to expand their product offerings."
Christopher Black, Multimedia Producer at World Health Organization (WHO): "Communicating health information on COVID-19 in real time is critical to helping people protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. "Restream helps us broadcast our live products simultaneously to five platforms. This has made our workflow much more efficient as well as reliable and has allowed us to make more creative and informative products available to an ever wider and growing audience. We have recently started using restream studio and it has truly been a game changer for us."
Restream is a freemium subscription business that supports creators and companies of all sizes and verticals. The company remains committed to being one of the most affordable and reliable services for broadcasters with free to tiered paid plans ranging from $19 per month to $299 per month. Customers actively using Restream include Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra, Microsoft, Redhat, SalesForce, Ubisoft, the World Health Organization (WHO), and more.
To learn more about Restream, visit https://restream.io/.
Restream:
Restream is the leading multiplatform live streaming service, combining a professional-grade streaming studio-including branded live streams, analytics, and audience engagement tools-with the ability to stream simultaneously to 30+ top social platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, and more. Founded in Ukraine in 2015, Restream's user base has expanded from gamers to a diverse and massive community of 2M+ creators including Fortune 500's, technology companies, SMB's, media and entertainment firms, politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. Restream has raised over $50M from investors including Sapphire Ventures, Insight Partners, Silverton Partners, Anorak Ventures, Liquid 2, Colopl Next, Mana Ventures, Iskra Ventures among others. The total number reflects a combination of primary capital and an existing share acquisition by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners. Restream has a global community in 80+ countries with headquarters in Austin, Texas, and a tech and product team in Kyiv, Ukraine.
About Sapphire Ventures:
Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on helping innovative technology companies become global category leaders. Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global executive network, Sapphire invests capital, resources and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly through a powerful business development, marketing and talent platform. With approximately $4 billion in assets under management across its Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport investment platforms, Sapphire is positioned to elevate companies across technology sectors to the global stage. To learn more about Sapphire Ventures, please see: https://sapphireventures.com/.
About Insight Partners:
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight's mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.
About the World Health Organization:
The World Health Organization provides global leadership in public health within the United Nations system. Founded in 1948, WHO works with 194 Member States, across six regions and from more than 150 offices, to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable. Our goal for 2019-2023 is to ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and wellbeing.
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