Israel’s Qwilt Raises $70M In Series E Funding At $800M Valuation

Israeli cloud-managed open platform, Qwilt, recently announced that it had raised an additional $70 million, taking its current valuation to approximately $800 million.

Cisco led the round and also included the company’s existing investors. It was unclear whether there the round included a secondary element in which shares will be purchased from employees.

Qwilt has developed software that accelerates the pace and streaming of live video and VOD broadcasts and reduces latency. The company’s product is already integrated into Cisco solutions as part of a strategic partnership announced last year.

The investment will enable the company to accelerate the development of its technologies and support its global growth. In addition, Qwilt will likely add some 150 employees to its ranks, about 100 of them in programming positions based in Israel.

The software solution that Qwilt developed, will accelerate the pace and continuity of live and VOD video broadcasts, and integrated within Cisco products, as part of a strategic partnership, the two announced last year.

“This investment signals an inflection point for Qwilt and Cisco to expand upon our shared vision to help service providers use edge computing to deliver digital content experiences from their own networks,” said Alon Maor, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-founder, Qwilt. “We are ready to accelerate our efforts by hiring new talent, elevating our marketing efforts and putting R&D into action for mass-scale growth.”

Qwilt’s technology optimizes network traffic to allow a continuous and high-quality broadcast. When the company’s system recognizes high demand for certain content, it uses Open Caching of the content at a location nearest to the center of consumer demand and improves the streaming and viewing experience. The software is cloud-based and can be operated from any location and be integrated into existing infrastructure.

“Streaming is a primary focus for most service providers today to drive revenue. Cisco’s investment in Qwilt demonstrates our commitment to helping customers monetize their edge cloud infrastructure with a solution that improves the quality of service and reliability,” said Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group, Cisco. “We are seeing great momentum with customers around the world who believe in the powerful combination of Qwilt and Cisco to take them to the next level with an innovative content delivery platform for streaming and on-demand services, new applications and more.”