Agora.io, a global company with offices in Santa Clara and Shanghai and customers in over 100 countries delivering a voice, video and live broadcasting platform, has secured $70 million in a Series C round of funding led by Coatue Management, a technology investor known for its investments in Uber, SnapChat, Box.com, Lime, DoorDash, and others.
Founded in 2014 by Tony (Bin) Zhao, a founding engineer at WebEx Communications (acquired by Cisco) and former CTO of Chinese social media giant YY.com, Agora is a provider of real-time voice, video and live broadcasting solutions for web and mobile applications. Existing investors SIG, Morningside and Shunwei Capital participated in the latest round, which brings Agora’s total capital raised to $125 million to date.
“The Internet has steadily transformed the way people communicate over the last decade, but these interactions will continue to shift as technology continues to advance at a rapid pace,” said Tony Zhao, Founder and CEO of Agora. “We’re excited to be at the forefront of this movement as Agora continues to disrupt the real-time voice, video and live broadcasting space with solutions that are not only transforming the way we think about real-time engagement but also how it can affect our everyday lives, both online and offline. We are creating a new category of real-time communications, one that puts engagement at the core of the user experience, and we will continue leveraging our unique technology and global reach to further transform this space.”
Software Defined Real Time Network
The Series C round follows an explosive year for Agora as the company experiences unprecedented growth and gains significant market share with new product releases like the React Native SDK and Unity Support, a wave of seasoned management hires, and a series of new partnerships with global technology innovators.
“At a time when every industry feels saturated with an endless array of products and services, we view authentic real-time user engagement as a competitive edge for our partners,” said Reggie Yativ, CRO & COO of Agora. “It is very exciting working with innovative and forward-thinking customers and partners to deliver amazing applications across a wide range of industries, including social discovery, social media, ecommerce, gaming, education and many more.”
The Agora Software Defined Real Time Network (SD-RTN) would empower global delivery of live video across 200 data centers globally, dynamically managing the routing of video to overcome severe packet loss incidents and enable a seamless, uninterrupted, high-quality real-time video delivery across the globe, even in the most remote locations and emerging markets.
The Agora.io platform includes features like voice and video calling, group conferencing, and interactive broadcasting, 3D and spatial audio for gaming, and much more. Agora is providing communications services to organizations across industries, including social discovery, social media, gaming, ecommerce, education, customer service, telemedicine, financial services, and more.
