Israeli photo and video editing apps developer Lightricks today announced the completion of a $130 million Series D financing round, which included $100 million in primary funding and $30 million in secondary funding. This latest financing round, at a company valuation of $1.8 billion, brings Lightricks’ total funding to-date to $335 million.
The round was co-led by Insight Partners and Hanaco Venture Capital, with participation from existing investors Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Clal Tech, Harel Insurance and Finance and Greycroft, and new investors Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham and Shavit Capital. Lightricks will use the latest funds to further develop its tools and offer more features and services for creators.
Lightricks has developed dozens of creativity apps for editing videos and photos for beginners through to professional artists and creators. Lightricks plans to become a one-stop shop for resources including creative tools, services and monetization opportunities.
With offices in Jerusalem and Haifa as well as London (headquarters), New York and Shenzen, the company was founded by CEO Zeev Farbman, CTO Yaron Inger, Nir Pochter, Amit Goldstein and Itai Tsiddon.
Farbman said, "Our mission has always been to continuously strive to bring creators the most advanced technology and help them find new ways to express themselves. The rise of the creator economy has only exacerbated the need of mobile users to streamline the content creation and monetization processes. With this latest funding, we’re able to help elevate our users' creativity and capabilities with continued advancements to our technology and offering."
During the peak of the pandemic lockdown, Lightricks saw a 90% increase in app usage across its creativity tools in the US. The number of downloads for Videoleap, the company's most popular video editing app for professional creators has increased 70% since the start of the pandemic. A survey found that nearly half of Videoleap users are exporting their creations to TikTok in pursuit of monetized content. Lightricks users create over a billion creations per year on the creativity apps, and the company continues to innovate and improve upon its tools to better serve creators in the creator economy, having launched four completely new apps within the last year.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 19, 2021
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