Roku Takes in $25M in Funding, Remains Tight-Lipped About It
Update 10/24/14: The Wall Street Journal broke the news this afternoon that Roku is planning an IPO, and stands to raise around $150 million. While it didn't cite any sources, the paper says Roku is working with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup Inc. on an initial public offering. The report didn't say when the IPO might occur.
Set-top box maker Roku has taken in an additional $25 million in funding, but don't expect the company to comment on it. The news only broke when journalists discovered an SEC filing the company issued yesterday.
StreamingMedia.com asked Roku public relations about the funding, but was told the company isn't commenting. Venture Beat did slightly better with this statement: " We recently closed a series of funding, which provides additional growth capital. We are not disclosing any additional information not already mentioned in the filing."
Roku has now raised a total of $153 million.
Funding announcements are usually a source of easy headlines for a company, a chance to point the way to future product growth. Roku's reticence to comment might surprise anyone except journalists who have dealt with the company before.
The first connected television sets that use a Roku operating system, created by Hisense and TCL, recently hit the market. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had shipped nearly 8 million devices, and that the average Roku user streamed 13 hours of content per week.
This summer, a report by Parks Associates found that Roku devices were the category leader, and were much more popular than Apple TV, the second most-used set-top box.
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