Tel Aviv-based video distribution network Hola has closed a $17 million series C round of funding. The cash infusion will be used to accelerate video delivery and cut video publishers’ costs for streaming video by 90 percent while increasing reliability and speed via the new Hola content delivery network (CDN) of global dedicated servers.
“Making the Internet faster has always been our passion,” said CEO Ofer Vilenski, who founded the company in 2006 with fellow serial entrepreneur Derry Shribman to do for streaming video what Skype did for P2P phone calls. They hold 30 patents on the technology.
“We’ve taken everything we’ve learned from building and managing a P2P network with our 52 million consumer users and built a P2P CDN network that pools server resources to create new cost efficiencies and capabilities that provide video publishers unmatched cost savings with increased quality.”
The Hola CDN is already in use with 12 video publishers participating in a pilot program and will become generally available by the end of this year. Jacky Abitbol, venture partner at Iris Capital, said he expects Hola to disrupt the $5 billion-per-year CDN market.
Hola also is increasing its engineering and product management team from 75 to 200 employees over the next 12 months. The company hires software developers from around the world and allows them to work from home.