Roku announced earlier today that it has received $45 million in a new strategic investment from News Corporation and British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). In a statement Roku said the new relationships will ‘include both financial backing and business agreements’. Roku say they will use the new capital to ‘build further brand awareness through advertising, develop new international markets, and increase engineering and production to support sales growth of both hardware and digital media services on the platform including advertising, games, transactional and pay- per-view video as well as content packages’.
The company will company will also be launching the Roku Streaming Stick in the autumn – a wireless, dongle-sized streaming device that seamlessly integrates with newer TVs – which will also be Roku’s first step in expanding its platform beyond its range of OTT boxes.
This round of funding also included prior Roku venture investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners as well as an unnamed strategic investor joined the round.
