Jerusalem-Based Startup Lightricks Raises $60M For Photo, Video Apps

Israeli startup Lightricks, which helps amateur photographers and videographers master professional-style photo editing via its apps on Apple and Android, announced that it secured a $60 million funding round led by Insight Venture Partners, a New York-based venture capital and private equity firm, with participation from Israeli VC company Claltech.

The company said in a statement that it will use the funds to develop new products and grow its team of 150 employees.

Lightricks apps have about 100 million downloads worldwide and nearly a million subscribers, the company says. Its Facetune portrait retouching application reached Apple’s best-selling paid app in 2017. Lightricks is also behind the popular Enlight photo editing app, which was Apple’s App of the Year in 2015, the No.11 bestselling paid iOS app in 2016, and winner of Apple’s prestigious Apple Design Awards of 2017. Both apps also reached a No.1 rank on iOS charts in over 120 countries.

Lightricks has also built a number of additional creativity apps, including video editor Videoleap and Quickshot.

“The mobile market is growing, and more and more people are turning to mobile devices over desktop software to create their content. Whether you’re an Instagrammer editing a photo, an artist designing a poster, or a small business owner creating a video, you can use one of our tools,” said Dr. Zeev Farbman, Lightricks co-founder and CEO. “This field of creativity lends itself well to the exciting, and in many ways, new business model of consumer mobile subscription. Insight brings expertise with several investments they’ve made in the consumer subscription space, and we are excited to partner with a world class firm to build a world-class company.”

“Our goal at Lightricks is to give aspiring artists unprecedented fun and powerful creative tools that look and feel magical,” the company has said.

Lightricks was founded in 2013 by Farbman, Amit Goldstein, Nir Pochter, Yaron Inger, and Itai Tsiddon.