BitTorrent scores a $US20m river of cash

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 03 December 2006 10:50

IT Industry - Deals

BitTorrent, developer of the peer-assisted digital content delivery platform, has closed a $US20 million round of series B financing and says it plans to use the funds to get its technology onto other web sites.

The company says "BitTorrent not only plans to provide an online destination for downloadable entertainment content through the bittorrent.com marketplace, but also plans to employ its revolutionary technology to power other websites with the performance and efficiency of BitTorrent's content delivery service."

The BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol was created in 2001 by Bram Cohen and BitTorrent the company founded by Cohen, now its CEO, and Ashwin Navin in 2004. BitTorrent claims that its protocol now account for as much as 40 percent of all worldwide Internet traffic and says it has worked closely with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to remove copyright infringing content from its website "in order to create a safe place for consumers to interact with the technology," and now says that more than 20 film studios and television networks, including 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, expect to publish thousands of movies and TV shows on BitTorrent.com.

"When I created BitTorrent in 2001, my mission was to solve the problem every website has when distributing large, popular files," said Cohen. "This mission is still what drives BitTorrent today and couldn't be more relevant as the Web grows into a channel for consuming large, high-value entertainment and information content. "

New investor Accel Partners led the round with participation from initial investor DCM.