Skyfire welcomes Verizon with $8m series C financing

Skyfire labs announced today that it has raised $8m in a series C financing event with Verizon Ventures, Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures. Verizon is a new strategic investor in the company who has raised $31m to date.

Jeff Glueck, president and CEO of Skyfire commented: “Skyfire’s Rocket Optimizer product is delivering an average of 60 percent savings for operators on video bandwidth. We welcome the participation of Verizon, which is renowned for its network planning sophistication.”


"Rocket Optimizer 2.0, the latest iteration of Skyfire’s powerful carrier-grade network video and data optimization platform, was launched in October 2011. With mobile video demand expected to rise steeply over the next three years, Rocket 2.0 aims to help carriers solve capacity issues linked to the rapid rise of mobile video streaming. The solution offers real-time optimization of mobile video to enable smoother streaming, and can be applied to specific cell towers or backhaul regions as soon as congestion is detected. Rocket Optimizer 2.0 also offers the broadest support for video formats, including the world’s first instant MP4 optimization (which comprises more than 50 percent of today’s mobile video, including most HTML5 and iOS video). By leveraging cloud computing power, Skyfire’s solution is highly cost effective to scale on both 3G and 4G LTE networks".


The company is planning to use the proceed of this round to expand international sales, after bagging two tier 1 carriers in North America, it is ready to expand to Europe and Asia and has already started to increase their sales efforts and teams in these regions.


Skyfire is the first company to promote cloud-based computing to resolve the video tide that is threatening to engulf mobile networks. This market space is seeing a lot of strategic activity (here and here) these days. No doubt more to come as we near Mobile World Congress.