Sequoia Capital has led a $100m round for British indie film streaming service Mubi, in a rare VC and media crossover play valuing the 18-year old company at $1bn.
Mubi recently made the jump from niche indie streamer to mainstream player with the success of The Substance, a body horror starring Demi Moore, which it acquired for distribution and theatrical release and later won an Oscar, Golden Globe and Bafta.
Sequoia is best known for early bets on Nvidia, Google and Apple, and has more recently backed AI darlings including OpenAI, text-to-voice startup ElevenLabs and legaltech Harvey.
Andrew Reed, partner at Sequoia, said the firm was betting on global demand for art house films rising.
“We’re a Silicon Valley investor, so the question is, how many people around the world will projects like this resonate with?” he told the Financial Times. “Our opinion is that this is going to resonate with a lot more people than anybody thinks.”
Mubi currently has about 20m users globally and costs £11.99 a month in the UK. It distributes films in the UK, US, Canada, Latin America, Germany and Italy and has more than 400 employees across 15 countries.
The company is profitable and is releasing its first original film — crime drama The Mastermind — later this year.
Mubi has raised more than $180m, according to Dealroom, with Sequoia joining the likes of C4 Ventures and MMC Ventures on its cap table.
Sequoia isn’t the first tech investor to make a Hollywood play. German founder and investor Christian Angermayer has acted as executive producer on 28 feature films, according to IMDB, such as James McAvoy’s Filth and Netflix’s Army of Thieves.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/sequoia-mubi-100m/
