Youku.com is a popular video sharing website based in China.  This website is known for hosting full movies, but has blocked certain regions from being able to play them.  Youku has raised $30 million in funding from Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital, and Chengwei Ventures.  Youku also received a $10 million loan for equipment from Western Technology Investment.

“This investment will enable us to advance the company’s rapid growth, expand our sales and marketing network, and most importantly, accelerate our monetization process as the online video market matures and consolidates in the coming year,” stated Victor Koo, President/CEO of Youku.com Inc. in a press release. ”With the new funds, we will be deepening our service to users, advertisers and media partners to give them the best and largest platform in China to distribute video content online.”

Youku receives 100 million unique visitors per month and each users spends about 300 minutes per month on the site.  Youku is the #6 largest site in China in terms of the amount of time that is spent on the site.

“We are happy with Youku’s success and its progress in monetization,” stated Len Baker, Managing Director at Sutter Hill. “The Youku team has clearly demonstrated its excellent execution capability, and we believe Youku is in the right position as online video takes off on a massive scale in China.”

Youku has also recently partnered with Universal, China Film Group, Beijing TV, EMI, Huayi Music and several other media firms. 

Youku’s last round of funding was $40 million.  That investment was provided by Sutter Hill, Brookside Capital, Chengwei Ventures, and Farallon Capital.

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The return on investment made on YouTube’s funding through the acquisition definitely has whetted the appetite of investors. YouTube took in two rounds of funding from Sequoia Capital for a total of $11.5 million. So how come Brightcove, a lesser known Internet TV website is receiving such substantial funding? Brightcove started with $5.5 million and then received $16.2 million. Today, it was announced that Brightcove raised $59.5 million. This comes to a total of $81.2 million of total funding. The investors include Maverick Capital, The New York Times Company, Transcosmos Investments, Accel Partners, Allen & Company, America Online, General Catalyst Partners, The Hearst Corporation, IAC (InterActivCorp), and Brookside Capital.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity outside the United States for Internet TV,” stated Adam Berrey, the VP President of Marketing of Brightcove. “We think this market will consolidate. It’s time for the leaders to emerge. This puts us in a good position.” Berrey didn’t mention what Brightcove is planning on doing for future plans, but according to TechCrunch, Brightcove did acquire metaStories on March 20, 2006. metaStories is a Seattle based company that has the tools that creates Flash content.

“Brightcove’s early success in partnering with media companies that are driving the transition of television and video distribution to the Internet puts the company in the right position as Internet TV takes off on a broader scale,” stated Jamie Kiggen, senior VP President of AllianceBernstein. “We’ve looked at many opportunities in this area and believe that Brightcove is well positioned for success in creating solutions that both media companies and consumers will embrace.”

With this new funding, Brightcove plans on growing the company and to provide Internet TV tools to media creators so that it would help them monetize as well as distribute their own videos. Brightcove is planning on launching ad revenue sharing soon.