- Online image and video editing platform company Kapwing recently announced it raised $11 million in Series A funding led by CRV
Kapwing — an online image and video editing platform — recently announced it raised $11 million in Series A funding led by CRV. Village Global, Sinai, and Shasta Ventures joined the round with follow-on investments. CRV’s General Partner Saar Gur is joining Kapwing’s board.
New investors Jane VC, Harry Stebbings, Vector, and the Xoogler Syndicate also joined the round. And with this round of funding, Kapwing is going to grow its engineering team to continue improving and expanding the multimedia tools and reach more creators.
What Kapwing does is empower a rising class of creative entrepreneurs who need faster, simpler, and more accessible software to make and share digital media. And the platform has grown to millions of creators since launching two years ago.
Kapwing’s founders Julia Enthoven and Eric Lu — both former Google Product Managers — were inspired to build a better multimedia creative suite after using media editors like Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, and iMovie. They found this software to be complex, slow, and unwieldy.
The Kapwing software is free, fast, and browser-based so creators can make and share video, image, and GIFs without needing to download and transfer huge files. And it includes tools and collections targeted at modern social media use cases such as designing Instagram Stories, adding subtitles, clipping YouTube videos, and making memes.
“Our plan is to expand browser-based editing capabilities for images, videos, and GIFs such that any company or individual creator can rely on Kapwing to create visual content,” Enthoven, Kapwing’s CEO, explains. “The high-end creators will still use powerful professional software, but that’s overkill for the average person.”
In under two years since launching in October 2017, Kapwing users have made more than 9 million images, videos, and GIFs on the platform. And over 700,000 creators have created a Kapwing account to save and share their work. As of September 1, 16% of the Fortune 100 companies have at least one employee who has signed up for Kapwing.
“Kapwing makes the tools that used to only be available to the skilled few available to anyone who wants to get their videos out into the world. I’m a huge fan,” Sivan Felder, video marketing expert at Two Heads Consulting, explains. “Despite being proficient in Premiere and After Effects, I still use Kapwing for some aspect of editing nearly every one of my videos.”
Kapwing’s users have tapped into the task-first editing tools due to its simplicity. And Kapwing creators do need to install any software or learn to use a complex software program. Kapwing’s software including Studio, Resizer, Music Editor, Cropper, and other tools help creators accomplish tasks quickly. Plus the company’s Subtitle Maker automatically generates captions and embeds the text into video files. This is a valuable tool for organizations who need to add subtitles to comply with the EU Accessibility Directive that took effect on September 22 of this year.
“We’ve watched online video explode for consumers, and it’s now becoming a core storytelling medium for businesses as well,” explained Gur. “Kapwing’s product represents an enormous leap forward for creators who want to make better media in a more cost-effective and accessible way.”
Kapwing’s watermark appears in the bottom right corner of some videos and images created with Kapwing. In the past year, videos made on Kapwing have gone viral on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Celebrities like Kanye West, Jennifer Lopez, and Joe Jonas have shared Kapwing-watermarked videos on social media. Often times, YouTube personality PewdiePie reviews memes with a Kapwing watermark on his channel.
This funding round also allows Kapwing to make their tools free to use. And as of July, users have been able to remove the Kapwing watermark from their output video or image by creating an account. Kapwing generates revenue with its brand new Workspace where users can store, re-edit, and collaborate on multimedia projects.
