SA国际传媒

Real-time video and audio communication is a feature the market wants.

However, real-time communication can be a huge challenge to implement well. But, like for so much of the technology stack, there鈥檚 a platform for that. Instead of rolling your own video communications network鈥攁nd take on the technical burden of maintaining and scaling it鈥攊t鈥檚 usually easier to deliver those features via existing infrastructure built by specialized service providers.

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is one of the companies operating in the background, helping to facilitate the video revolution with its proprietary real-time communications network. You may not have heard of the company before, but there鈥檚 a chance you鈥檝e used its services. Agora.io provides a software development kit (SDK) to app developers who wish to integrate live video broadcast or voice and video call functionality into their apps.

In an exclusive with SA国际传媒 News, the company is formally announcing it has raised an additional $30 million in an extension of its Series B round. The first part of its Series B, , was closed in September 2015 in a round led by , which also had like , , , and . The Series B extension the company announced today was, in fact, closed in early 2017, with all prior investors participating.

With $50 million now raised in its Series B round, and from 2015, the company has raised a total of $55 million in known venture funding.

Agora.io was founded in 2014 by . Before Agoraio, Zhao served as the chief technical officer, VP of operations, and board member for five years at , which went public in November 2012. He was also one of the founding engineers leading real-time audio and visual technology at , which was .

In a statement provided to SA国际传媒 News, Zhao observed that “there鈥檚 been a paradigm shift in the way people communicate and engage with [others] across the globe. More and more businesses are realizing that their users and customers desire real-time interaction and have started deploying in-app voice and video calling in droves.”

The challenges around development, implementation, and scaling are manifold. In an interview with SA国际传媒 News, 鈥攚ho is dual-titled as Agora.io鈥檚 chief of revenue and operations鈥攕aid that cost, quality, mobility, and ubiquity are all obstacles to companies which opt to build their own real-time audio and video networks. Here are some of the challenges Yativ highlighted:

• Cost. “Transmitting high-definition video over the open internet would take up a lot of bandwidth, which doesn鈥檛 come cheap. […] This is why we built our own proprietary audio and video codecs, which take up less bandwidth.”
• Quality. “Reducing latency and lag is essential for delivering a good communications experience. Doing that requires a large network of data centers distributed around the world, which, obviously, isn鈥檛 easy to get up and running.”
• Mobility. “Mobile networks are getting better, but there鈥檚 still a lot of variability in network connection quality. Using one of Agora.io鈥檚 algorithms, a user could have fifty or sixty percent and they could still communicate over video.”
• Ubiquity. “Mobile phones are everywhere now, but that also means we have to support multiple generations of devices from many manufacturers that may run different variants of an operating system. It鈥檚 a complex problem to solve.”

Yativ is bullish on Agora.io鈥檚 prospects. The company already has over 200 employees spread across offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, CA. Many of its customers 鈥� which include , , and 鈥� are based in Asia. But the company intends to expand to serve a more global customer base.

Yativ said the company sees opportunities in gaming, livestreaming, and messaging. There鈥檚 also an emerging class of social applications like Madison, WI-based , an interactive mobile shopping game show, which uses Agora.io for audio and video streaming. In 2016, IDC that in 2018 the U.S. video communications platform-as-a-service market would be $204.7 million annually. By 2020, that鈥檚 projected to be nearly $1.7 billion.

To date, Agora.io鈥檚 SDK has been installed on over half a billion mobile devices worldwide through its customers, and the company鈥檚 globally distributed network of 200 data centers facilitate over ten billion minutes of streaming communication per month.

SA国际传媒 News has learned that the company is beginning to court strategic investors and plans to raise its Series C round in the near future.

Updated: We updated a sentence about the company’s fundraising timeline.

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