Amagi becomes a media tech unicorn

Amagi has raised $95 million in new funding, valuing the media tech company at more than $1 billion, CEO and co-founder Baskar Subramanian tells Axios.

Why it matters: That valuation brings Amagi, a cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, to unicorn status.

Details: The new funding round was led by Accel with participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Avataar Ventures.

• Amagi has now raised about $245 million in total, most recently $100 million last year led by Accel, and this is its seventh round.
• Amagi is looking for acquisitions such as machine learning startups, technologies that augment live sports and news and other revenue-generating, creative companies.
• "The cloud is ready for media companies. It was not ready maybe five years back in terms of latencies, in terms of bandwidth that you needed. All of that is solved today," Subramanian says.

Catch up quick: Amagi was formed in 2008 and initially focused on geo-targeted advertising on television in India.

• Subramanian says around 2015, he pivoted the company to build cloud infrastructure globally, and Amagi now helps content owners distribute videos across platforms.
• He declines to disclose specific annual revenue but says the startup's annual recurring revenue was "close to three-digit million."
• Amagi supports more than 650 media brands and more than 2,000 channels on its platform in more than 40 countries. Its customers include Discovery, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Tegna.

What's next: With the new financing, Amagi plans to quadruple the U.S. sales team and grow its R&D department in India.

• Amagi intends to grow to 800 employees from 500 this year.
• Subramanian says he wants to expand across more geographies.

The bottom line: "We believe, truly, that all of the media operations will move to the cloud and streaming television becomes the dominant platform of choice," Subramanian says.

Kerry Flynn co-authors the Axios Pro Media deals newsletter. Sign up now.