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Wireless - Monday, July 30, 2007

ActionEngine Rides iPhone's Coattails To $20M Funding Round

Seattle's ActionEngine has a kick-your-teeth in home page that blasts cinematic music and images at you. Its bold stuff for a startup that has cast about in the wilderness for years - it was launched in 2000 and has won only 15 clients during those years.

Action Engine helps content owners distribute their audio, video and text to mobile devices. MSNBC is it biggest client. Today the company has won $20M in venture funding from its existing investors bringing the total funding in the startup to $65M.

With the huge marketing machine behind Apple's iPhone, with its focus on watching YouTube videos, the issues of mobile multimedia has been pushed to the front of the functionality line. ActionEngine acknowledges that they have caught a second win thanks to the iPhone even though they do not have a deal with Apple. The company's CEO told the Seattle PI that it has five or six more contracts lined up with top-tier media companies whom he described as the "biggest of the big."

Action Engine has signed a deal with TiVo so that mobile phone users of the digital video recording service can select shows to record while away from their TV sets. If you are a Verizon subscriber you can get the service for $1.99 per month.

Read - Seattle PI post