AnyClip raises $47 million, planning to bring its video platform to enterprises
Tel Aviv- and NY-based startup, a provider of software for content producers to develop and distribute videos, is introducing AI tools and targeting the business sector
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
Israeli digital video and advertising tech company AnyClip said Tuesday it has raised $47 million from investors and that it has added artificial intelligence capabilities to its video making platform to target businesses.
AnyClip provides software that enables content producers to develop and distribute their videos on websites and social media and earn revenue. The firm is now introducing a fully automated platform to manage, distribute and analyze video, using its new visual intelligence properties.
The firm said it will use the new funds to double the number of its employees, from the current 120.
Other investors in AnyClip’s funding round include La Maison and Israel’s Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot. The firm has raised a total of $77 million to date from investors, including the current funding round.
The company, based in Tel Aviv and New York, said it saw a massive increase in revenue in 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns boosted video production, distribution and viewership to an “all time high,” the statement said. For businesses, video is becoming a dominant form of communication, enabling them to target customers with clips explaining what they do and tutorials on how to use their products, for example.
“Enterprises have typically used text to get their message across within and outside the organization,” said Erel Margalit, a co-founder of the startup and the founder and chairman of venture capital fund JVP, which led the latest round of investment into the firm.
“AnyClip brings video as a major… tool” for firms to use for these purposes, Margalit.
The company’s focus until recently has been providing media outlets with software to make and monetize their videos. It is now turning to the enterprise world, which is seeing a boost of activity.
Yes, the aim is to become a “TikTok for enterprise,” agreed Margalit in a phone interview.
TikTok is a Chinese social media platform used to make a variety of short-form videos released in 2016. The company had some 100 million monthly active users in the US as of August 2020, up nearly 800% from January 2018.
“We were a bit early with our vision,” said Margalit of the firm, which was founded in 2008. The industry needed the convergence of state-of-the-art technology that allows anyone to make videos in a simple manner with huge global demand. That convergence is happening now, he said.
AnyClip has offices in New York, Tel Aviv, London, and Berlin. Its investors have included Roman Abramovich’s Ervington Investments, former Sony America president and CEO Michael Schulhof, who also co-founded AnyClip, and Limelight Networks.
“Video is now the leading communications medium for businesses around the world, but this tectonic shift to video has resulted in an infinite amount of new content that’s nearly impossible to navigate,” said AnyClip president and CEO Gil Becker in the statement. “Our visual intelligence platform is helping bring order to this chaos for businesses in all industries, of all sizes and in any language. Powered by this new investment, AnyClip is expanding to address the needs of a huge untapped market for an automated platform that makes videos more discoverable, actionable, and personalized.”
