Blackwave Closes $7 Million Series C Funding

Blackwave, in Internet video storage and delivery infrastructure, announced its  completion of a $7M series C investment, bringing its total venture and strategic capital funding to more than $29M.

This latest funding includes continued investment by Globespan Capital Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Sigma Partners. The company will use the capital to fund its ongoing domestic and international sales and marketing expansion.

Blackwave’s integrated storage and delivery platform – the Blackwave R6 – allows Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), telcos, wireless network operators, content publishers and video aggregators to store and deliver video in multiple protocols from a single platform. This integrated infrastructure significantly lowers the capital and operational costs associated with high-quality IP video delivery to a large, concurrent audience. With this round of funding, Blackwave will expand its sales force internationally to respond to increased demand for its systems.

"This renewed investment, combined with the ongoing acquisition of a range of new customers and partners, signals the market’s great confidence in our technology and our value proposition," said Bob Rizika, Blackwave’s CEO.

A single rack of Blackwave’s system enables storage and delivery of video and rich media via HTTP, Flash Media Server (FMS), and Windows Media Server (WMS) at a useable bandwidth of 30Gbps. This density, when combined with the system’s ease of installation, integration and management, results in a significant decrease in the capital expense and ongoing operating expense associated with building and scaling an IP video delivery solution.

One recently closed Blackwave customer will decrease its storage and delivery infrastructure from 20 racks of commercial equipment to two Blackwave system racks, dramatically lowering its ongoing operational expense while increasing its aggregate delivery capacity. Another customer, faced with the challenge of system expansion, chose Blackwave over an internally built solution. The company projects lowering expansion costs by 70% by enabling the customer to reduce its rack system needs from seven to one.

"Our due diligence process left us with great confidence in Blackwave," said Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director of Globespan Capital Partners. "After close analysis and discussion with an array of their customers, we believe Blackwave meets the market’s need for intelligent, scalable, high-performance video delivery infrastructure. We look forward to their continued success."