Bitmovin builds cloud-native video infrastructure and developer tools for digital media companies and service providers. Its software-defined encoding service runs on any cloud platform and provides scalable media encoding, playback, and analytics features. The company supplies video developer tools used by major OTT providers including discovery+, fuboTV, DAZN, BBC, RTL, RedBull Media House, Globo, ClassPass and The New York Times. Led by CEO and founder Stefan Lederer, Bitmovin emphasizes product innovation and technology leadership in streaming. It maintains offices in San Francisco and Denver as well as internationally in Austria (Vienna, Klagenfurt), London, Berlin, Singapore and São Paulo. The company intends to use new funding to continue expanding its product and technology capabilities. Bitmovin is an Austrian multimedia company, now headquartered in San Francisco, that provides software-driven video streaming and OTT delivery technologies. It powers streaming services for customers including the BBC, fuboTV, Hulu Japan, RTL and iFlix. The company said the financing will be used to strengthen research and product development teams in Austria and to support sales and marketing investments to scale its distribution network. Bitmovin’s founding team contributed to modern video standards and the company emphasizes optimized, bandwidth-efficient, software-based delivery uncoupled from hardware. Financially, Bitmovin will receive up to €20 million in financing from the European Investment Bank, backed by the Juncker Plan. Bitmovin provides a developer- and API-focused platform for online video, including video compression, playback and analytics APIs. The company was founded by two creators of the MPEG-DASH streaming standard and targets TV streaming providers, internet companies and social media firms. Its technology roadmap includes AI-driven encoding, a video player that reduces page load time, and support for the royalty-free AV1 codec. Named customers include Sling, Periscope, The New York Times, ProSiebenSat.1, Red Bull Media House, FuboTV, RTL and iflix. Bitmovin plans to use new funding to scale product R&D, field engineering and sales teams worldwide to expand its global customer base. Financially, the company reported 3.5x revenue growth last year, expects similar growth this year, and has raised $43M in total to date. Bitmovin develops adaptive streaming and video-encoding software, including an HTML5 player that supports MPEG-DASH and HLS across desktop, mobile, Smart TVs and VR headsets. The company says its encoder produces output 100x faster and at higher quality than other services on the market. Its co-founders helped create the MPEG-DASH standard, which powers streaming on services like Netflix and YouTube and accounts for roughly 50% of peak U.S. internet traffic. Bitmovin already provides services for several recognizable names in the VR industry while maintaining significant work in traditional video streaming. Management intends to use new funding to accelerate development of its adaptive streaming technology for new mediums such as VR. The article frames Bitmovin’s product as addressing quality and device-mismatch issues as higher-resolution and diverse VR headsets enter the market.

Total raised

$87M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Apr 2021