Qwilt Nets $16M in New Funding to Optimize Online Video Delivery

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., July 30, 2013 — Qwilt, a leading provider of online video delivery and transparent caching solutions, today announced it has closed a $16 million Series C funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with contributions from its current investors, Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Marker LLC. The new funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $40 million. The new investment will be used to expand its international sales and engineering teams to meet global network operator demand for its flagship product, the Qwilt QB-Series Video Fabric Controller.

The explosive growth of online video is straining the capacity and performance of operator networks, creating a strategic dilemma for cable, broadband, and mobile service providers. To keep pace with consumer demand and remain competitive, operators need to simultaneously address three strategic imperatives: improve consumer quality of experience (QoE), cost effectively increase network capacity and monetize over-the-top (OTT) video traffic across their networks. Qwilt’s innovative video delivery technology enables operators to significantly increase network capacity, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional network expansion, while improving quality of service for customers. Deployed at the subscriber edge, Qwilt’s highly optimized video content delivery system supports a flexible network architecture that can both scale to support future increases in demand for OTT video content and enable new monetization business models for network operators.

Qwilt’s Video Fabric was engineered from the ground-up to deliver large volumes of video traffic from the subscriber edge, for unprecedented reliability and performance. Qwilt’s flagship product line, the QB-Series Video Fabric Controller, monitors video traffic on operator networks, identifying trending and popular titles and then storing them locally at the subscriber edge, in close proximity to the end user. This eliminates the need for replication of content streams from origin sites or content delivery networks (CDNs), reducing network traffic and congestion for a seamless, high quality consumer viewing experience.

“Operators are struggling to meet the rapidly growing demand for streaming video. In laymen terms: it’s very difficult to deliver a quality viewing experience without straining their networks,” said Bob Goodman, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Drawing on deep expertise in both networking and storage, Qwilt solves this problem with an impressive video delivery system that provides network operators with unprecedented visibility, control and improved quality of service. This smart approach to a tough problem is what attracted Bessemer, and frankly, it’s why they can point to high rates of adoption among operators as well.”

“We founded Qwilt with a vision to address the strategic problem of online video delivery for network operators. This investment from Bessemer, together with the ongoing commitment of our current investors, is further validation of our approach and momentum,” said Alon Maor, CEO and co-founder of Qwilt. “Bessemer’s support will accelerate our growth and success, as we continue to enhance our product and scale our operations to better serve our growing global customer base.”

About Qwilt

Qwilt addresses the impact of OTT video on operator networks with a unified, turnkey1 solution that combines transparent caching, video delivery and analytics technologies deployed at the subscriber edge. Qwilt QB-Series Video Fabric Controllers optimize delivery of streaming video content to relieve network traffic congestion for operators and deliver a higher quality viewing experience for their customers. A growing number of the world’s leading cable, telecom and mobile service providers rely on Qwilt to optimize their networks to support growing consumer demand for online video content as a primary entertainment source. Founded in 2010 by industry veterans from Cisco and Juniper, Qwilt is backed by Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker and Redpoint Ventures. Learn more at Qwilt.com.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

With $4 billion under management, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is a global venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass., New York, Mumbai, Bangalore and Herzliya, Israel. BVP delivers a broad platform in venture capital spanning industries, geographies and stages of company growth. From Staples to Skype, VeriSign to Yelp, LinkedIn to Pinterest, BVP has helped incubate and support companies that have anchored significant shifts in the economy. More than 100 BVP-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia. See www.bvp.com or follow BVP on Twitter: @bessemervp.

Qwilt Press Contact:

Hope Nicora
Bhava Communications for Qwilt
1 (510) 984-1527
qwilt@bhavacom.com

Qwilt and QB-Series are trademarks of Qwilt. All right reserved. All other trademarks or trade names referenced here are the property of their respective owners.