Life On Air, the Israel-based operator of social video platform Houseparty, has raised $52m from investors including Comcast Ventures, mass media group Comcast’s investment arm, Jewish Business News (JBN) reported yesterday.
The round was led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and included Aleph VC and Greylock Partners. The Wall Street Journal had reported news of the round and the investors on Friday, placing its size at “about $50m”.
Houseparty is an app that allows several users to video chat with each other as part of a group. It was released in September this year and is currently nestling in the top 10 most popular free iPhone apps.
Life on Air had previously developed Meerkat, the Twitter livestreaming app that briefly achieved notable success in early 2015 before being superseded by Twitter’s own Periscope tool.
The company received $14m in series B funding in March 2015 from backers including Comcast Ventures, record company Universal Music Group; Broadway Video Ventures, a subsidiary of entertainment producer Broadway Video; and talent agencies William Morris Endeavor, UTA and CAA, the latter investing through its CAA Ventures unit.
Greylock, Aleph, Sound Ventures, Vayner/RSE, Raine Ventures, Slow Ventures, Sherpa Ventures and angel investors David Tisch, Chad Hurley and Jared Leto also took part in the series B round. Life on Air has raised approximately $70m in total, according to JBN.