Coatue leads $70m round for China, US-based Agora
Agora.io, a real-time voice and video communication platform established by Tony Zhao, formerly CTO of Chinese social networking player YY.com, has received $70 million in Series C funding led by Coatue Management.
Several existing investors re-upped, including SIG, Morningside Ventures, and Shunwei Capital. It brings Agora’s total raised to $125 million to date.
Founded in 2014 and based in Santa Clara and Shanghai, the company has built a communication framework that supports more than 10 billion minutes a month of video, audio and live interactive broadcasting. It enables developers to embed communications functions into any web or mobile app.
The company uses a network of 200 data centers globally to deliver seamless, uninterrupted, high-quality real-time video, allowing customers to increase user engagement and stickiness. It supports audio group calling with up to seven active and 10,000 passive participants and high-resolution video calls for up to 17 simultaneous participants.
Agora has customers in over 100 countries and its software development kit has achieved two billion installs. The application is embedded into social networking sites such as Momo, MeetMe, and FaceU as well as into a string of mobile gaming platforms. Other corporate users come from e-commerce, education, customer services, telemedicine, and financial services.
“Live video is like the live band that plays at your local shop. It’s dynamic and happening in-the-moment, and that’s what live video brings to our apps MeetMe, Lovoo, Skout, and Tagged,” said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group, in a statement. “By integrating Agora’s voice and video APIs into our applications, we gave our users a new way to virtually meet and form authentic connections. Not only has live video created new revenue streams, it’s also become a big driver of user engagement and satisfaction.”
Agora secured $5 million in Series A funding in 2015 and then a $20 million Series B later the same year from Morningside, SIG, GGV Capital, Shunwei, and IDG Capital. An Series B extension of $30 million closed in 2017.
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