Media streamer Plex It has raised new capital. The company, which started as a media startup, has evolved over the years into a one-stop-shop for all your media, including ad-supported streaming, which now accounts for a large portion of its revenue growth. The new round, which has not yet been disclosed, was initially said to be larger than Plex’s $50 million growth round that closed a few years ago, but we now understand it’s $40 million, a Plex representative confirmed. These funds will help fuel the company’s push toward profitability, expected by the end of the year or immediately after.
Plex CEO Keith Valory confirmed the round had closed this month, but was unable to reveal Plex’s new valuation. While he joked that he likes to think of himself as a unicorn, Plex’s real-world valuation is unknown because the company hasn’t raised outside money in some time, preferring instead to work with its existing group of investors.
The same applies to Plex’s new investment, as it is an internal round that includes existing Series C investors – lead investor Intercap and Kleiner Perkins. (Technically, it’s Plex’s Series C-3, if you’re counting.) The size of the round will be revealed later through securities filings.
“We have the most supportive investors ever,” Valory said. “I feel like financing has never been a concern for us,” he added.
The fundraising comes after a number of changes to Plex’s core product over the years, which has transformed itself from a software platform that consumers use to organize their home media collections into a platform with many facets. Today, Plex users can watch free ad-supported shows and movies, listen to music, stream their own live TV or media, and much more, including discovering new things to watch. Recently, the company has also been developing social features, allowing Plex users to sign up for a feature that tracks their viewing and shares it with friends.
This feature will be developed further throughout the year. Plex says it aims to expand community capabilities for both content owners and users through the use of public pages that will provide content owners with a greater stake in the conversations happening around their movies and shows.
Another planned feature, announced at CES, is the upcoming launch of Plex’s TVOD marketplace — an online storefront that will allow users to rent shows and movies from top studios.
However, so far, it’s Plex’s ad-supported streaming that has helped Plex grow its revenue. Although Plex was impacted by the market downturn, which led to layoffs, Plex’s ad revenue grew nearly 45% in 2023 and its overall business grew 30%, the company tells us. Participation and usage have also increased. Valory noted that the company is still on track to achieve profitability by the end of 2024 or early next year.
“We’re the leader in this market. We’re at least in the top five if not higher in this space, and we feel like we’re doing a really good job,” he said.
As a result of Plex’s ability to track users’ media discovery and consumption behavior across platforms and services, the company has a unique perspective from a data standpoint. This will be the focus of her future business initiatives as well.
“One of the things we’re already starting to prove in 2023 is that we can certainly monetize some of this data… in a very privacy-friendly way. There’s no personal information used,” Valory said. “We’ve already proven that we can monetize that.” This year, so, in 2024, we’ll be putting more wood behind this stock. It can be said that, although our current business is already growing at 30% to 40% annually, this may dwindle in two to three years. “This is a really big market opportunity,” he added.
1/24/249, 7:10 PM EDT: Updated in circular size; Round size confirmed by Plex