Quibi, the video streaming startup backed by entertainment and media groups Walt Disney, Warner Bros and Entertainment One, is seeking an additional $1bn in funding, The Information reported yesterday.
Founded as New TV, Quibi is putting together an online streaming platform that will provide short-form content designed to be viewed on mobile devices. It plans to match the video length associated with YouTube clips to production values of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The company is led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who headed Disney’s animation studio in the 1990’s before co-founding film production company Dreamworks, and Meg Whitman, ex-CEO of computing technology provider Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Quibi had raised a total of $1bn as of July 2018, with $200m coming from Warner Bros, Entertainment One, Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox, which Disney acquired for $71.3bn in March this year.
Fellow entertainment producer Sony Pictures Entertainment is also an investor, as is e-commerce firm Alibaba, investment banking firms Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, and venture capital firm Madrone Venture Partners.
The additional funding is being raised to support content production, four people familiar with the matter told The Information. Quibi has already signed production deals with Evil Dead and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi and Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro.
The company is also pursuing businesses for advertising deals, having recently hired Marni Schapiro, a former advertising executive at social media platform Snap, as its head of North America advertising sales.
Quibi will offer an ad-free version of its platform for $8 per month, while advertisers will be able to access viewers through a $5 per month tier, according to an investor deck seen by Digiday. It expects advertising to be responsible for 30% of its revenue at the point it reaches 30 million subscribers.
