Restream, a multi-platform live streaming solution, has raised USD50 million in Series A financing led by Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners. In addition, Restream is launching Restream Studio, a broadcasting production centre 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, says: “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 organisation’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 two million live streamers broadcasting an average of eight 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 per cent increase since January.
Paul Levine, partner at Sapphire Ventures, says: “Long before remote work and life became the norm, Restream’s multi-streaming 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 maximise 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, says: “Restream’s 300 per cent 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 recognised 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 the World Health Organization (WHO), says: “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 re-stream studio and it has truly been a game changer for us.”
