StreamElements raises $100 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2
The Israeli-founded company develops engagement and monetization tools for live and Video on Demand (VOD) content creators and has experienced accelerated growth during the pandemic
17:2722.09.21
Israeli-founded StreamElements, which provides engagement and monetization tools for live and Video on Demand (VOD) content creators, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $100 million in funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The round also includes participation from PayPal Ventures, MoreTech, and existing investors State of Mind Ventures, Pitango First, Menorah, and Mivtach Shamir, among others.
StreamElements was founded by Or Perry, Doron Nir, Gil Hirsch, and Reem Sherman. The company also announced on Wednesday that it is naming co-founder Hirsch as CEO, Yuval Tal as COO, Jason Krebs as CBO, and Udi Hoffmann as CFO with Doron Nir now serving as President with a focus on supporting U.S. operations and company vision. Under the terms of the transaction, Nahoko Hoshino, a senior investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the Board.
StreamElements team. Photo: Kobi Bachar “Since launching StreamElements in 2017, it has become the leading platform in the creator economy by building great products and providing legendary service to content creators of all sizes while helping them collectively generate over a hundred million dollars,” said Gil Hirsch, CEO and co-founder of StreamElements. “With this additional funding we are bolstering our staff to strengthen and broaden our ability to enable content creators across multiple platforms to make a living doing what they love.”
StreamElements, which employs 170 people, 70 of them in Israel, has a platform-agnostic approach and provides production tools and services, such as overlays, alerts, chatbots, merchandise stores, and tipping. While StreamElements currently provides robust offerings to livestreamers on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming, the company said that its new round of funding will allow it to expand its reach to an even broader swath of creators, including those who focus more on uploading videos to YouTube and livestreamers on Trovo.
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StreamElements’ focus on the uploaded video space and new platforms are tied to the recent momentum of consumption habits around the online viewership of gaming culture which have accelerated significantly over the past year, driven in large part by the quarantine mandates in March 2020. This includes the hours watched on Twitch doubling since that date when it crossed the 2 billion threshold in January 2021. During this same period, StreamElements experienced over 233% growth and has since continued its upward trajectory with over 1.1 million creators around the world using its broadcasting tools and services.
“YouTube currently has over 40 million active gaming channels, making it the largest gaming platform in the world,” added Hirsch. “The bulk of this content is on-demand videos that lack the real-time engagement functionality that has driven the success of the livestreamed market. We are focused on infusing on-demand videos with dynamic interactive features to strengthen the communities around this type of content.”
