Billionaire Alan Howard Joins Latest $20M Bet on Decentralized Video Network Livepeer

Livepeer, an Ethereum-based network that helps startups add live and on-demand video to their products, has raised $20 million in a Series B extension funding round with backing from new investors Alan Howard and Tiger Global, as well as participation from existing investors.

The funding comes five months after Livepeer’s initial Series B round, which also raised $20 million and was led by Digital Currency Group, which is the parent company of CoinDesk.

Howard co-founded Brevan Howard Asset Management, a European hedge fund focused on macro trading, but stepped down from his CEO role in 2019 to focus on his personal investing. He has a net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.

The new funding will go toward expanding the go-to-market and customer base using the MistServer video software that Livepeer acquired last fall, Livepeer founder and CEO Doug Petkanics said in an interview with CoinDesk.

Read more: Decentralized Video Protocol Livepeer Raises $20M to Take On Streaming Giants

MistServer is a flexible content delivery technology that helps developers build on a cost-effective infrastructure and scale streaming applications across a wide variety of verticals, including entertainment, events and gaming.

Livepeer’s near-term roadmap includes plans for artificial intelligence-backed smart video and peer-to-peer content delivery, as well as AI-enhanced content moderation, song detection and video fingerprinting.

Livepeer plans to make MistServer widely available to video developers in an open source model rather than the license model typically used in the video industry.

The company’s future plans also include migrating more of its protocol to a layer two solution that would be less expensive for node operators and token holders.

“I think this is going to be the year that Web 3 applications touch millions of consumers. I’m excited for Livepeer to be the video layer that powers a lot of that,” said Petkanics.

CORRECTION (Jan. 5, 15:51 UTC): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the amount raised in Livepeer’s initial Series B round was $28 million.