Israeli video optimization startup Beamr imaging Ltd. has raised $4 million from Verizon Ventures, the company reports. Previous investors in the Tel Aviv-based video and image encoding and processing company with commercially deployed content adaptive optimization technology include Eric Schmidt's fund Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC, and Disruptive. Beamr raised $15 million in March and $9.5 million in a financing round in 2014.
Verizon Ventures' investment will support Beamr's contribution to improved network performance and video quality and will enable the Israeli startup to accelerate development of solutions that will feature the company's highly regarded and patented perceptual quality measure technology.
Beamr was founded in 2009 by CEO Sharon Carmel.
Carmel said, "Beamr's vision has always been to merge standards-based encoding technologies with the benefits of our perceptual quality measure, so the industry can meet the heightened consumer expectations for video quality while staying within network constraints. Our approach to bitrate reduction has attracted an industry-leading customer base where network capacities and media storage requirements are under pressure, but where exceptional video quality must be maintained."
Building on the acquisition of Vanguard Video earlier this year, Beamr's industry leading video optimization solution, Beamr Video, has combined two highly regarded HEVC and H.264 software encoders that are in use by dozens of leading media & entertainment companies, broadcasters, streaming video distributors, and OEMs. The products are available as software running on all major platforms and operating systems, and may be deployed on most cloud services including Microsoft Azure and AWS.
"The competitive nature of consumer video services today is forcing everyone to improve and we believe Beamr's perceptually driven optimization technology delivers benefits to the network and ultimately, the bottom line," said David Famolari, Director at Verizon Ventures. "Beamr significantly addresses the pain and costs of storing and delivering high bandwidth video content over increasingly congested networks, with no loss in visual quality. As more HD and ultra-HD content becomes available, Beamr's technology can be critical to delivering superior end-user quality of experience."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 7, 2016
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