Live video platform Videon lands $7.3M, hires new CEO and plans to open co-HQ in Seattle

Videon, a live streaming video infrastructure company, has raised $7.3 million in funding and hired a new Seattle-based CEO as it moves part of its operation from State College, Pa., the company announced Tuesday.

Seattle-based venture capital firm Voyager Capital led the Series A round. Videon plans to expand its senior leadership, engineering, marketing, and sales teams with the cash and bring its video compute platform to more customers worldwide.

Rob Green, a tech veteran whose previous experience includes an 8 1/2-year stint in Microsoft’s Digital Media Division, said Videon has achieved many breakthrough moments in video innovation.

“With live video growing exponentially, our new investment comes at exactly the right time,” Green said in a statement. “We will leverage the company’s unrivaled expertise, vision, and know-how to enable more people to take advantage of the full potential of live streaming.”

Green and other executives will be based in Seattle and Videon’s founders and engineering team will remain in Pennsylvania. The company has 44 employees.

Videon helps solves the complex issues around getting live video from source to audience without expensive broadcast equipment or costly third-party services. Its technology helps process video at the source, combining built-in functions running on its local video compute platform with additional features from the cloud. Amazon Web Services is a partner.

Videon says its broadcast-quality, ultra-low latency live video solutions are used in sports, news, emergency services, and houses of worship across more than 19 countries.

Voyager Capital Managing Director Erik Benson said the Videon tech and journey is similar to that of a couple other video startups funded by Voyager. Make.TV, which relocated from Cologne, Germany to Seattle in 2014, was eventually acquired in 2019 by LTN Global for $50 million. Portland-based video processing startup Elemental was acquired by AWS in 2015 for $350 million.

Benson said the Series A rounds for both Make.TV and Elemental were the same size as Videon’s.

Tricia Iboshi, former chief operating officer at Make.TV, has taken on that role at Videon. Iboshi was also co-founder of video application service provider RocketVox, which was acquired by thePlatform and then Comcast.

“Videon has huge near-term growth potential because its price point makes it possible for literally anyone to stream high-quality, low-latency live video,” Benson said. “When you add the potential to also take advantage of edge compute capabilities, you have a breakout opportunity.”

Seattle-based Arnold Venture Group also participated in the funding along with investor and former Adobe Systems CEO Bruce Chizen. GeekWire