Boxee Raises $16.5m Funding: More Content & Tablet Support Promised

Boxee has closed a new round of funding, raising a further $16.5m in investment which the company says it will spend on adding content to the streaming media platform, increasing the number of hardware partners producing standalone Boxee Boxes, and developing the system to take on more of the established A/V ecosystem. According to Boxee VP of marketing Andrew Kippen, the company "would also like to see Boxee handle all the video on a TV with no need to switch inputs."

Two new investors have joined the fray, Pitango and Softbank, while several existing investors have increased their stake. The previous round of funding was 18 months ago, and raised $6m. Boxee has promised more US and international content sources will be made available, and that the extra cash will allow them to roll them out quicker as well.

Meanwhile, bugfixes and tweaks will also be faster, and the company is taking on more staff. Among the openings is Senior User Experience Designer, who will in part be responsible for Boxee's push into tablets.

Official statement:

I'm happy to announce that Boxee has just closed a $16.5M round of financing.

New investors looking for a piece of the action:

Pitango [Tel Aviv] – Led by Isaac Hillel from Pitango who will join our board.

Softbank [New York City] – Led by Jordy Levy.

Previous investors coming back for more:

General Catalyst

Spark Capital

Union Square Ventures

Funding / Company Snapshot

Our previous round of financing was $6M and at that time we were 12 employees, our software was in alpha and the Boxee Box was a dream. Fast forward 18 months and we are a different company. 34 employees, ver 1.0 of the software and the Boxee Box is available in more than 30 countries.

We are more hungry and driven than ever. Less naive, but dreaming even more ambitious dreams. We are also recruiting, so if you are a Boxee fan and passionate about what we're doing then maybe you can join us in either NY or TLV. Check out our jobs page.

The new funding will help us focus on 3 main things:

Product – The new round will enable us to grow our development team, building new functionality while continuing to squash bugs. We will add more movies, TV shows, and video while at the same time making it easier to discover and watch them. We have ideas on both fronts and are excited to get to work. We would also like to see Boxee handle all the video on a TV with no need to switch inputs.

More Content – We recently added Netflix and Vudu to the Boxee Box. There are many more sources of content on our ToDo list in the US and internationally. Every new content source makes Boxee more valuable so we'll be upping the speed with which they'll be coming on the platform.

More Partners – D-Link is already shipping the Boxee Box, Iomega is working on a Boxee NAS device and ViewSonic is working on a TV based on Boxee. We plan to sign up more device and distribution partners, giving users more options and more ways to get Boxee.

We are really excited to welcome our new investors and thankful for the continued support of our existing investors. Most of all we're happy that we get to continue to improve Boxee for our users.