“Winter” hasn’t come for ad-tech yet. The investment in video technology vendors keeps coming, even if the role of venture investors appears to be changing.
Enterprise and education video technology platform Kaltura is taking a $50m investment from Goldman Sachs – the largest of seven rounds now totalling $166m, according to Crunchbase.
The outfit announces it wants to use the capital to “extend its footprint across all six continents”, as well as to move its marketing positioning from “open-source” to “everything video”.
“When we started, flexibility, openness, openness was more than a means, it was an end in itself,” says Kaltura CEO Ron Yekutiel in this video interview with Beet.TV. “We didn’t have a lot of features, we presented it by what we did differently, that was a marketing point.
“We have since created a lot of products. By Forrester, Gartner and IDC, we are the leading enterprise video platform. When people buy, they are buying the commercial product, they don’t care about the open-source product.”
Outstream video ad-tech outfit Teads also raised its biggest financing round this week from a bank syndicate. In both companies, the moves indicate a shift in funding source, away from venture backers to banks, and an IPO that has not yet happened.
In Kaltura’s case, however, The New York Times reports: “The financing is intended to be Kaltura’s last before it pursues an initial public offering.” Teads’ IPO plans are not clear.
