Media streamer Plex has raised new capital. The corporate, which started as a media group startup, has morphed through the years to change into a one-stop store for all of your media, together with ad-supported streaming, which now accounts for a lot of its income development. The brand new spherical, which has not but been disclosed, was initially mentioned to be bigger than Plex’s $50 million growth round closed a few years ago, however we now perceive it’s $40 million. The funds will assist gasoline the corporate’s push towards profitability, anticipated by year-end or simply after.
Plex CEO Keith Valory confirmed the spherical closed this month, however was unable to reveal Plex’s new valuation. Whereas he joked that he likes to think about himself as a unicorn, Plex’s real-world valuation is unknown as the corporate hasn’t raised exterior funds in a while, preferring as a substitute to work with its current set of traders.
The identical holds true for Plex’s new funding, because it’s an inside spherical that features current Collection C traders — lead investor Intercap and Kleiner Perkins. (Technically, it’s Plex’s Collection C-3, in the event you’re counting.) The scale of the spherical will later be disclosed by securities filings.
“We have the most supportive investors of any,” Valory mentioned. “I feel like funding has never been a concern of ours,” he added.
The fundraising follows various adjustments to Plex’s core product through the years, which has remodeled itself from a software program platform utilized by customers for organizing their residence media collections to 1 that has a number of sides. At this time, Plex customers can watch free, ad-supported reveals and flicks, hearken to music, stream stay TV channels or their very own media, and extra, together with the invention of latest issues to observe. Not too long ago, the corporate has been developing social features, as properly, permitting Plex customers to choose right into a characteristic that tracks their viewing and shares it with associates.
This characteristic might be additional developed over the course of the yr. Plex says it goals to develop the group capabilities for each the content material house owners and for customers by using public pages that may supply content material house owners a much bigger stake within the conversations that happen round their motion pictures and reveals.
One other deliberate characteristic, introduced at CES, is the forthcoming launch of Plex’s TVOD marketplace — a web based storefront that may permit customers to hire reveals and flicks from high studios.
Up to now, nonetheless, it’s Plex’s ad-supported streaming that’s been serving to Plex develop its income. Although Plex was impacted by the market downturn, leading to layoffs, Plex’s advert income grew by practically 45% in 2023 and the general enterprise grew by 30%, the corporate tells us. Engagement and utilization have been rising as properly. The corporate continues to be on monitor to be worthwhile by the tip of 2024 or early subsequent yr, Valory famous.
“We’re a leader in this market. And we’re in, at least, the top five if not higher in this space, and we feel like we’re doing really, really well,” he mentioned.
On account of Plex’s capability to trace customers’ media discovery conduct and consumption throughout platforms and providers, the corporate has a novel perspective from a knowledge standpoint. That would be the focus of its future enterprise initiatives, too.
“One of the things we’ve already started to prove in 2023 is that we can absolutely monetize some of that data…in a very privacy-friendly way. There’s no personally identifiable information being used,” Valory mentioned. “We already proved we could make money on that this year, so, in 2024, we’re putting more wood behind that arrow. And arguably, even though our current business is already growing 30%-40% per year, that could dwarf it in two to three years. That is a really big market opportunity,” he added.
1/249/24, 7:10 pm et: Up to date with spherical measurement
