WeVideo has just secured $19.1 million for its cloud-based collaborative video editing platform, in a round led by Crest Capital Ventures of Houston, Texas. The company says it plans to use the funding to further ramp up its development team.
Unlike desktop editing software, which is restricted by computer hardware limitations, WeVideo’s online video editing solution can scale up processing speeds on demand, based on an end user’s needs. As users move up through the company’s paid tiers, speeds increase, as does the available storage space and video resolution.
For those unfamiliar with WeVideo, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup first launched in fall 2011, and is a spinoff from a European venture called Creaza, which offers a similar, but education-focused, movie editor to a quarter million students across Europe.
In addition, videographers can collaborate on projects together, where all project members can share their video clips via a single interface. (This feature is available to paid users only).
WeVideo’s free version offers 1 GB of workspace and scales up to offerings that range from $6.99 to $79.99 per month for 10 to 100 GB of workspace, as well as varying export qualities and additional features. An enterprise version is offered, too, with pricing on request.
The company is notable for having formed a partnership with YouTube in October which saw it integrated directly on YouTube’s website at YouTube.com/create. WeVideo also recently celebrated its commercial product launch, a partnership with Qatar Foundation International (www.qfi.org), adoption by Startup Idol and the TechZulu news organization, the launch of a power video editing app for Android tablets and more.
So yep, they’ve been busy over there at WeVideo.
CEO Jostein Svendsen previously estimated the service would amass over a million users by year-end 2012. (They had over 125,000 in January). The company isn’t disclosing how many users it has now, however.
The company also said in January it saw 1,000 video projects per day using the online platform. Svendsen says that number is “much higher now,” but was not able to provide specifics.
He mentioned that, next week, the startup will be announcing several new B2B partnerships involving “very large global companies” that will supercharge its growth in terms of “adding thousands and even millions” of users to its platform.
“Some of these might be business customers of ours,” says Svendsen of the new partnerships, “but ultimately, the end users are consumers. But we’re also expanding heavily into business users…but that’s not next week. Next week is B2C announcements.” Again, Svendsen declined to provide details, this time due to the embargoes the partners had placed on their end for the release of their news.
WeVideo’s team of a dozen is set to expand rapidly over the next few days, due to the new funding and the impact of forthcoming announcements. They will also be opening new offices in Europe, Asia and even the U.S.
Svendsen says we can also soon expect new product offerings at new price points, some of which have a B2B focus, others which are consumer-facing. These, too, will be announced sometime in the near future, possibly related to the planned announcements in the upcoming week.