Genius operates as a lyric-annotation site where users and artists annotate and explain song lyrics. The company announced a partnership and investment from Eminem, who will continue annotating his own lyrics on the platform. As part of the tie-up, Genius will serve as the official lyrics engine for Eminem.com and all of Shady Records’ online properties. Dollar amounts and specific financial terms of the investment were not disclosed in the article. The announcement was accompanied by promotional content, including a TechCrunch feature where Alex and Drew rap-battle the news and readers vote. No operating metrics, past rounds, founding year, or location were provided in the article. Genius (formerly Rap Genius) is an online annotation platform that began in 2009 to explain rap lyrics and has expanded to annotate many types of text. The company launched embeddable, self-serve annotations so any website can hover over text to view explanations and background information. Genius monetizes primarily with advertising and has also launched an iPhone app to diversify traffic sources away from SEO. With the new funding it plans to hire engineers, designers, and community leaders to grow product and community features. The company has faced prior controversies, including a temporary Google demotion for link spam and the resignation of a co-founder over insensitive annotations, but its leadership says it has bounced back. Total funding now stands at $56.8 million. Rap Genius operates a community-driven website that crowdsources explanations and context for rap lyrics and broader texts. The founders position the product as a platform to annotate literature, poetry, religious texts, political speeches, legal texts and academic papers. Founder Mahbod Moghadam has a stated vision to "annotate the world" and create an "Internet Talmud" of knowledge about knowledge. The site is described as one of the fastest-growing in Y Combinator’s history and draws substantial traffic from users seeking lyric explanations. The service emphasizes community contribution and contextual annotation rather than traditional editorial curation. Financially, the company has attracted a significant external investment of $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

Total raised

$55M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Jul 2014