Joost closes $45 million in financing

Posted by Dennis Sellers May 10, 2007 at 9:48am

Joost, an Internet television service, has announced that five selected parties have collectively invested approximately US$45 million in the company. Each party invested in a minority percentage of the company. This funding will enable Joost to accelerate product development, global expansion, localization, and service offerings.

“This funding represents a tremendous vote of confidence in Joost’s platform,” says Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost. “We’ve carefully selected these investors from a variety of interested parties, as they are best-in-class in their respective arenas and bring unique assets to Joost that will enable us to significantly accelerate growth and development of the company.”

Index Ventures, a leading European venture capital firm, which invests in impactful technologies that have global reach, led the round with Sequoia Capital, a premier venture capital firm in the world. Li Ka-shing, chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Limited and Cheung Kong Holdings, invested in Joost through his charitable foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation. CBS Corp. and Viacom are also content partners, providing channels and programming on Joost.

Joost, which launched commercially last week, was created by the folks who came up with Skype. The Joost peer-to-peer streaming technology is designed to provide a new way of watching TV on the Internet, which uses new and established technologies. Currently, Joost channels are like playlists of videos. You can flip between channels, or use the program guide to choose a channel or a video to watch.

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