Skyfire develops mobile browser products and carrier-facing optimization tools, including the Skyfire Rocket Optimizer and a consumer mobile browser. The Rocket Optimizer can reportedly reduce bandwidth for videos by 60% and images by 50% and is delivering optimized video to tens of millions of Americans. The company also recently launched the Horizon Toolbar, which lets users access services like Facebook and Wikipedia while browsing. Although its focus has shifted to products for mobile carriers, Skyfire continues to offer a consumer mobile browser notable for Flash video playback. CEO Jeff Glueck says the new funding will support international growth and new offices beyond its Silicon Valley base and existing London office, targeting Eastern Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Skyfire has now raised more than $40 million in total funding. Skyfire builds a mobile browser and related web tools, including the Rocket Toolbar and the Skyfire Rocket video-compression engine. The Rocket Toolbar is a web-based toolbar that adds social sharing buttons to pages, and the Skyfire Rocket engine compresses streaming video on-the-fly by about 60% when the network is congested. The company says Rocket Toolbar has partnered with one unnamed tier-one US carrier, while the Rocket engine has found two unnamed tier-one partners. Skyfire’s consumer browser has passed 12 million downloads across iOS and Android. The company will use the new funding to increase engineering to meet wireless operator customer demand, expand sales and support resources, and push into European and Asian markets. Financially, Skyfire had raised just shy of $23 million over the prior five years before announcing this latest round. Skyfire builds a mobile browser that brings desktop web technologies (Flash, Silverlight and others) to phones, positioning itself as a PC-like browsing experience on mobile. The company launched a new version for Windows Mobile with high-resolution support, a sleeker, finger-friendly UI, crisper text, smoother zooming, full-screen mode, and kinetic scrolling. The update adds native VGA and wVGA support, a touch mode that hides UI elements, and keeps text entry visible when virtual keyboards are used. Skyfire updated support for Adobe Flash 10 and Microsoft Silverlight 1.5 and upgraded servers to improve speed. The browser includes a customizable, high-resolution homepage called the “Fireplace,” aggregating RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail into a single stream. Skyfire reports over one million users and broad device support including Nokia, Samsung, LG, HTC, Palm, Motorola and BlackBerry devices. Skyfire builds a mobile browser designed to support desktop web technologies such as Flash and AJAX on phones. After a $13 million funding round and a couple of roster expansions, the company prepared for a Symbian launch. Skyfire began issuing beta tickets to users who signed up over the preceding months. The initial beta targets S60 third‑series devices and is being distributed on a first‑come, first‑serve basis. At the time of reporting, TechCrunch had not found any beta users to report impressions. The company is positioning the product as a more capable alternative to existing mobile browsers by enabling features typically reserved for desktop browsers.

Total raised

$36M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

Oct 2012