Event Tech Business Tracker
Skift Take
Use this tracker to follow the latest news on event tech funding, as well as mergers and acquisitions. All items listed below are in chronological order, with the latest on top. For details on financing terms, refer to our Skift Financing Cheat Sheet.
Latest Deals
Nowadays Raised a $2 Million Party Seed Round
December 6, 2024
AI event-planning startup Nowadays has received $2 million in capital from various investors. This funding will be used to hire engineers to accelerate the development of its AI-powered features.
RainFocus Acquires WebEvents Global
September 16, 2024
Event marketing platform RainFocus acquired WebEvents Global, an event technology and data analytics firm founded in 2002. RainFocus appointed WebEvents Global’s former president, Karis Takiya, as principal integrations architect to lead its strategic data integration consulting practice.
Cvent Acquires Splash
September 4, 2024
Cvent acquired event marketing technology company Splash. The company is known for supporting field marketing events through event marketing tools including easy-to-use event websites and email marketing templates that easily adhere to corporate branding. Splash boasts 500 customers, including over 60 Fortune-1000 companies, now joining the Cvent ecosystem.
Planned Secures $35 Million in Series B Funding
July 18, 2024
Canadian sourcing and booking platform Planned announced on Thursday that it had secured a $35 million round of Series B financing. Drive Capital led the round, which included Outsiders Fund and two other undisclosed firms. The company said it will use the funding to expand its AI offerings, continue its global expansion, and expand travel booking capabilities. Planned also announced that Hopper CEO and co-founder Frederic Lalonde would join its board.
Groupize Acquires The Vendry
July 17, 2024
Meeting and travel management platform Groupize announced Wednesday the acquisition of The Vendry, a venue and vendor marketplace. The acquisition adds more than 73,000 venues and vendors to Groupize’s existing booking engine of 190,000 hotels globally aimed at corporate planners. The Vendry will be integrated into Groupize by the end of the year, and going forward, the venue and vendor marketplace will be known as The Vendry by Groupize.
Grip Acquires Event Management System from Connectiv Holdings
July 16, 2024
UK-based event platform Grip announced the acquisition of the event management system (EMS) from U.S.-based for-profit conference organizer Connectiv Holdings. Grip has had a deep integration with Connectiv Holding’s EMS since 2018. The newly acquired products are now part of Grip’s ‘Manage’ product suite, which features registration, sponsor and exhibitor management, and smart badges. Connectiv Holdings will continue to use the EMS for all its events, and they will be offered to all other Grip customers. A portion of Connectiv Holdings’ developer team will be joining Grip and Mac Fraser, CTO of Connectiv will be joining the Grip board as an observer.
Cvent Acquires Reposite
June 10, 2024
Cvent acquired Reposite, an AI-powered vendor and supplier-sourcing marketplace. The acquisition adds more than 35,000 transportation, restaurants, entertainment, staffing, gifting, and other offerings, broadening Cvent’s vendor-sourcing database. Cvent will also use Reposite’s technology to expand its offering of vendors supporting in-person, virtual, and hybrid events through its Cvent Vendor Marketplace.
Tripleseat Acquires Merri
June 5, 2024
Tripleseat, a sales and event management platform for restaurants and hotels, has acquired Merri, a 3D floor plan and event design application for restaurants, hotels, unique venues, and event planners. Tripleseat serves 16,000 restaurants and hotels globally and has managed 34 million events to date. Merri will be integrated into the existing Tripleseat platform.
Hyperspace Acquires Glue
June 3, 2024
Immersive enterprise metaverse solution provider Hyperspace announced the acquisition of Glue, a Finland-based virtual meeting technology startup. The move will add Glue’s real-time communication platform to Hyperspace’s existing suite of virtual events, employee onboarding, and learning solutions. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
GrowthZone Acquires JUNO
May 20, 2024
Association management software provider GrowthZone has acquired the community engagement and learning platform JUNO. JUNO will be re-branded as the GrowthZone Community application. GrowthZone will retain and provide support to current JUNO customers. JUNO previously partnered with PCMA to provide a community platform for PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2022. It raised $10 million in Series A funding in May 2022, following a $3.5 million Seed round in August 2021.
Bending Spoons Acquires StreamYard and Remaining Hopin Assets
April 9, 2024
Bending Spoons, an Italy-based technology firm, will acquire Hopin and its current product lines of StreamYard, Streamable, and Superwave. The deal focused on the StreamYard product and user base, which Hopin acquired for $250 million in January 2021. The company has received over $700 in funding. The latest round of $155 million in equity financing came two months ago at a post-money valuation of $2.55 billion. The company has publicly expressed its desire to acquire technology companies. Bending Spoons’ business model for some of the products it has acquired involves limiting free offerings, raising prices, and moving to a subscription in place of a one-time fee.
Brandlive Acquires Notified’s Virtual Event Technology
April 3, 2024
Brandlive acquired Notified’s virtual events business for an undisclosed sum. Notified retained its IR Event Platform aimed at the niche and profitable investor relations calls market. The acquisition covered mostly the technology Notified, then named Intrado, acquired from Hubb in August 2021.
Webex Events Divests from Events
March 29, 2024
Webex announced it will no longer offer Webex Events (formerly Socio) as a standalone product to new clients. Users of the full Webex Suite can continue using Webex products to run their events. Webex will support existing clients of the standalone Webex Events for one year until April 30, 2025.
Mobly Raises $2.5M in Seed Funding Round
February 26, 2024
The mobile software company Mobly announced a financing round led by Peterson Ventures, with
participation from VITALIZE Venture Capital, Peak Ventures, Tenzing Capital, Upstream Ventures,
and Service Provider Capital. This round of funding follows a previous angel investment of $445,000. Mobly was founded in 2023 and has developed an event-agnostic lead capture SaaS application that automatically syncs profile and activity data in CRM or marketing automation platforms (MAP) for immediate sales follow-up.
Duetto Acquires MiceRate
February 7, 2024
Revenue management system provider Duetto has acquired Germany-based MiceRate, a provider of dynamic pricing and online booking tools for meetings and event spaces.
Cvent Acquires Jifflenow and iCapture
January 12, 2024
Cvent acquired automated appointment scheduling platform Jifflenow and lead capturing tool iCapture. It did not disclose financial details about the deal but looks set to integrate the tools to complement its event marketing and management platform.
Veertly Acquired by Swisscom Broadcast
December 12, 2023
Swiss virtual event platform Veertly is being acquired by Swisscom Broadcast four years after developing the first prototype and two years after closing a seed financing round. The data security-focused platform has hosted thousands of online events for mainly small and mid-sized enterprises in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
MeetingPackage raises $4.6 million in Series A Funding
October 2, 2023
MeetingPackage, a venue and group bookings sales automation platform, has secured a $4.6 million Series A round led by Scale Capital. The company plans to accelerate growth in Europe and facilitate expansion into the North American market. The platform will soon accommodate online bedroom bookings for groups and integrate with multiple sales, catering, and property management systems.
EventMobi Acquires Run The World
August 2, 2023
Event management software provider EventMobi acquired virtual event platform Run The World for an undisclosed amount. Run The World was founded in 2019 by ex-Meta Xiaoyin Qu and raised $18.8 million from a16z and other investors. The Run The World platform will be sunset, with existing customers transitioning to the EventMobi platform.
RingCentral Acquires Hopin Virtual EventAssets
August 2, 2023
Hopin sold its Events and Session products to RingCentral for $15 million, a price that could climb to $50 million based on the achievement of specified undisclosed performance targets. The company secured more than 1$ billion in funding over its unicorn journey and was valued at $7.75 billion. Hopin will continue as a company, now focused on two products it previously acquired, StreamYard and Streamable, and a new community platform called Superwave. The acquisition of Hopin was barely a footnote in RingCentral’s relevant earnings statement.
Joyn Acquires Arinex and Rebrands to Arinex Live
July 6, 2023
The event technology platform Joyn (formerly Delegate Connect) acquired Arinex, the largest Australian-owned event management company. The two companies have come together under the Arinex Group brand, with Joyn rebranding as Arinex Live. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Accelevents Acquires High Attendance
April 25, 2023
Event management platform Accelevents has acquired virtual event platform High Attendance. This gives Accelevents a client base of more than 12,500 organizations. It forecasts having 3 million users on the platform in 2023.
High Attendance was acquired in August 2020 by event marketing platform Banzai. Founder Christopher Justice joined Banzai as vice president of operations but later re-founded High Attendance in July 2022. Justice will take an advisor and business development role with Accelevents.
Accelevents will not merge the platforms but plans to rebuild some core aspects of the High Attendance technology within the Accelevents tech stack. The platform will be shut down once the remaining High Attendance customers are migrated to Accelevents.
Swiss Post Acquires Event Platform SpotMe
April 4, 2023
Swiss Post has acquired a majority stake in SpotMe. SpotMe’s management team is also investing in the company alongside Swiss Post. SpotMe will continue to operate independently as it looks to tap into Swiss Post’s network. The management team, the product and services lineup, and all existing contracts will remain unchanged. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Cvent to Be Acquired by Blackstone in a $4.6 Billion Deal
March 14, 2023
Cvent has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Blackstone in a transaction valued at approximately $4.6 billion. Stockholders will receive $8.50 per share in cash. Cvent rejected Blackstone’s initial offer of $8 per share in January. A wholly owned Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) subsidiary will be a significant minority investor. The transaction is expected to close mid-year 2023, making Cvent a privately held company again.
Hubilo Acquires Badging Specialist Fielddrive
February 23, 2023
Virtual and hybrid event technology company Hubilo acquired Fielddrive, a Beligum-based company specializing in on-site event technology, including check-in, badging, and access control. Fielddrive will run as an independent entity and continue to be platform agnostic. The financial details of the deal were not revealed.
Ungerboeck Rebrands to Momentus Technologies
January 30, 2023
The new brand brings together Ungerboeck‘s acquisitions, including EventBooking, Priava, Showorks, and Risk Manager. Newly appointed CEO Alex Alexandrov joins after serving as chief operating officer, president of the Latin American region and executive board member at SoftwareONE.
Glisser to Enter Administration
January 27, 2023
Founder Michael Piddock posted on LinkedIn that the company had found a buyer for its platform, but not for the broader business. It will go into administration next week with 25 staff looking for new roles.
Cvent and MeetingPackage Announce Partnership
January 17, 2023
Planners using Cvent to source hotels can now quickly book meeting space and services at any hotel or venue that leverages MeetingPackage, including chains such as Radisson Hotel Group, Nordic Choice Hotels, Clermont Hotel Group and Leonardo Hotels. The MeetingPackage software integrates with operational software solutions such as Oracle Opera or Amadeus Delphi for venues and hotels or can be used as a self-service standalone tool.
Blackthorn.io Receives Investment from RF
November 17, 2022
RF Investment Partners announced a growth capital co-investment with Level Structured Capital in Blackthorn.io, a Salesforce-native event management and payments software platform. Financial details were not disclosed. Blackthorn.io is now one of ten software companies part of RF’s portfolio.
Appendee and Elevent.ly Merge
October 7, 2022
The Netherlands-based Appendee (formerly Twoppy) and Elevent.ly have merged under the Appendee brand. The new event tech offering is fully integrated, including registration, mobile event apps, and virtual platform modules. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Meetingselect Acquires Cyberdigma
October 3, 2022
Netherlands-based Meetingselect, an online marketplace for meetings & events, group bookings and workspaces, has acquired Cyberdigma, the parent company of Seats2meet.com, an online booking engine for meeting spaces. The two companies had previously collaborated in the development of Meetingselect’s Instant Bookings product. Financial details were not disclosed.
Personify Acquires GTR
August 31, 2022
Community experience platform Personify announced the acquisition of Charlotte-based GTR, an event tech company with 25 years of industry presence. This acquisition adds badge printing, online registration, lead retrieval and attendance tracking capabilities to Personify’s offerings. Financial details were not disclosed.
Planned Raises $18 Million in Series A Funding
July 21, 2022
Montreal-based event planning platform Planned closed a round of Series A funding led by Drive Capital, with participation from Outsiders Fund, THCAP, and N49P. The platform provides a single place for sourcing, managing, and invoicing vendors. It lists unique venues like airplane hangars, museums, restaurants, and local event spaces, along with traditional corporate venues like hotels and convention centers.
Blackthorn.io Secures $16M in Debt and Primary Financing
June 29, 2022
Blackthorn.io, a developer of Salesforce-native tools used for event management, payment processing, and SMS apps, announced a raise of $15 million in debt financing and nearly $1 million in primary financing at a valuation of $75 million. New hires and leadership realignment are in place to position the business for growth to $50 million in annual reoccurring revenue (ARR).
MeetingPlay + Aventri Acquire Registration Company Eventcore
June 9, 2022
Event technology company Meeting Play + Aventri acquired event registration company Eventcore. The announcement follows the $75 million private equity investment from Sunstone Partners in MeetingPlay in June 2021 and the merger of MeetingPlay and Aventri in January. Financial details of the acquisition were not made public. Seattle-based Eventcore is known for delivering bespoke event registration services for large events, including the virtual-only CES 2021.
Cvent Acquires VenueDirectory
June 8, 2022
Event technology provider Cvent acquired UK-based venue booking site VenueDirectory. Financial details were not released about the deal that closed on June 1. Founded in 1993, it provides the UK industry with the largest data center of venue information. VenueDirectory will continue to operate as a standalone business unit.
JUNO Raises $10M in Series A Funding
May 26, 2022
JUNO, a platform for digital engagement activities, has secured $10 million in Series A funding led by global software investor Insight Partners. This follows the November 2021 PCMA announcement of a partnership with JUNO as its official year-round community platform provider. The platform came online for PCMA’s Convening Leaders, which took place in January.
Glisser Raises $4.9M in Private Equity Funding
May 17, 2022
London and New York-based event tech company Glisser raised $4.9 million in a round of funding led by Gresham House Ventures, with previous investors Downing Ventures also investing. The funds are to be used to develop new features for its ‘Glisser Elements’ Software Development Kit (SDK) and to fuel further growth in the U.S.
EventsAIR Receives Large Private Equity Investment
March 29, 2022
Australian events management software provider EventsAIR has received a significant private equity investment, believed to be over $100 million, led by The Riverside Company. As part of the investment, U.S.-based event tech veteran Matthew Donegan-Ryan joins as CEO with founder Trevor Gardiner, who was CEO, taking on the role of executive director of product innovation.
Allseated Raises $15M in Private Equity Funding
March 15, 2022
Virtual conference platform Allseated announced $15 million in new funding to develop corporate metaverses. This round of funding came from Trinity Capital, Vestech Partners, NYFF, Magma Venture Partners, and WGG. The company sees the metaverse and Web 3.0 as a $1 trillion market opportunity. Allseated experienced 120% revenue growth in 2021 and has 120 employees worldwide.
Tevent Raises $2M in Seed Funding
March 10, 2022
Tevent, a UK-based virtual event technology platform, announced a $2 million round of seed funding backed by a group of individual Silicon Valley investors from companies such as Salesforce, Medallia, MeshDynamics.io and Strikedeck. The company is preparing for a Series A round as the company looks to increase growth in the UK, US and across Europe.
Eventcombo Raises $1M in Seed+ Funding
March 7, 2022
Event technology company Eventcombo announced a $1 million Seed+ funding round backed by individuals from Hudson Ventures, Sheets Smith Wealth Management, and Om Investment Partners, along with angel investors from Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. The distributed company plans to increase its headcount globally. It will focus on creating a metaverse platform where organizations can create their venues and configure events with an integrated NFT marketplace. Also part of the plans is a Series A round of funding and a further expansion into the US as well as what the company calls untapped frontier markets.
Freeman Partners with Hubilo
March 1, 2022
Trade show giant Freeman has formed a strategic partnership with virtual events platform Hubilo to offer clients a “turn-key digital event component”. The partnership adds new options for Freeman’s clients looking to service an online audience and opens up opportunities for Hubilo to collaborate with a recognized leader in in-person experiences.
Airmeet Raises $35M in Series B Funding
February 8, 2022
Airmeet announced a new round of funding backed by new investors Prosus Ventures, Sistema Asia Fund, RingCentral Ventures, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, DG Daiwa Ventures and Nexxus Global who participated alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Accel India. The company says it has 120,000+ event organizers on the platform, streaming 150 million minutes of event video to date airtime. Airmeet boasts growth of 30% month on month, scaling its annual recurring revenue 24 times since its Series A investment round in September 2020. Indian media platform Entracker published a speculative report in November 2021 that Airmeet was looking for investment and that the company valuation was now over $150 million, up from $50 million 14 months prior.
Swoogo Raises $20M in Series B Funding
February 7, 2022
Swooge announced a $20 million growth investment led by Bain Capital aimed at accelerating the development of its enterprise-focused event management system as well as supporting its virtual and hybrid platform offering. Swoogo shared it has nearly tripled its recurring revenues in the past two years it has also grown its enterprise client portfolio with clients including Atlassian, Box, and DocuSign.
BroadcastMed Acquires Digitell
January 18, 2022
Digitell announced that BroadcastMed acquired it. The deal was signed in December and backed by investment firm 424 Capital. BroadcastMed has not disclosed any specific financial details about the deal, which brings one of event technology’s legacy players under the umbrella of a well-established medical content firm.
MeetingPlay and Aventri Merge in Private Equity Deal
January 6, 2022
Established event players MeetingPlay and Aventri will merge, helped by an undisclosed investment from private equity firms Sunstone Partners and Camden Partners. No specific financial details were provided. Eric Lochner will helm the new firm as CEO. Co-founder and former MeetingPlay CEO Joe Schwinger, and Co-Founder and former MeetingPlay COO Lisa Vann will remain with the new company and undertake executive roles. Former Aventri CEO Jim Sharpe will remain a shareholder and advisor to the new company.
Zuddl Raises $13.35M in Series A Funding
January 6, 2022
Y-Combinator-backed Zuddle raised this round led by Alpha Wave Incubation with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, GrowX Ventures, Waveform Ventures. The startup was founded in May 2020 and boasts clients such as Microsoft and Rosen College of Hospitality Management on its branding-conscious virtual and hybrid platform.
Zoom Acquires Liminal Assets
December 27, 2021
Zoom announced in a blog post that it had acquired certain assets from Liminal, a startup company that offers event production solutions built largely on Zoom’s SDK. Zoom plans to integrate into its core offering the software solutions created by Liminal that enables multiple HD video feeds to be fed from Zoom to production-grade hardware and applications.
Spatial Raises $25M
December 14, 2021
This round of investment, which brings the total raised to $50 million, included Pine Venture Partners, Maven Growth Partners, Korea Investment Partners, KB Investment, Mirae, Balaji Srinvasan, with participation from existing investors iNovia, Whitestar and Lerer Hippeau. The New York-based company was founded in 2016 and previously specialized in easy-to-join 3D online collaboration spaces. After seeing tremendous growth in its non-headset offerings, Spatial is now pivoting to focus on metaverse cultural events, in particular, NFT exhibitions.
Cvent Lists on the Nasdaq
December 9, 2021
Cvent announced the completion of the business combination of Cvent and Dragoneer Growth Opportunities Corp. II, the special purpose acquisition company formed to enable the public listing. Cvent started trading on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “CVT” with shares priced at $10. The company hopes this move will enable further growth and global expansion.
mmhmm Acquires Macro
November 19, 2021
mmhmm has used an undisclosed portion of its recently raised $100M to acquire Macro, a Zoom client that allows users to personalize how they show up on Zoom calls. This is an obvious match with both companies focused on making live or pre-recorded video communication more engaging and fun. With the entire Macro team joining the mmhmm team, we expect Macro’s client-level technology to be integrated into mmhmm’s virtual camera capabilities.
Bizzabo Acquires Klik
November 16, 2021
Bizzabo acquired Montreal-based smart wearables startup Kilk for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition brings new onsite hardware and software expertise in-house. Bizzabo is keen to offer its clients rich behavioral and intent data that is common in virtual events. Klik’s wearable tech and infrastructure add data visibility opportunities for in-person events comparable to virtual events.
6Connex Acquires Eventory
November 9, 2021
Virtual environment platform 6Connex acquires Poland-based event management platform Eventory. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eventory adds a registration tool, an intuitive event portal, and a mobile app to 6Connex’s offering. It also provides a 2D virtual environment with chat, surveys, polls, and networking features.
Bizzabo Acquires TeeVid
October 26, 2021
Bizzabo acquired TeeVid, a little-known Israeli video production startup, to power its brand-new Ultimate Video Production Suite. TeeVid is Bizzabo’s third acquisition in the last five months, following its acquisitions of x.ai and Whalebone. The company raised almost $138M in December 2020, with acquisitions clearly part of its business strategy.
Hubilo Raises $125M in Series B Funding
October 12, 2021
With this round of funding, Hubilo has become one of the best-funded event technology companies. This is a significant departure from Spring 2020, when Hubilo publically pivoted from an event app and management tool. This impressive round of funding was led by Alkeon Capital, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital.
Delegate Connect Raises $10M in Seed Funding
September 16, 2021
Australia-based Delegate Connect raised $7.3 million (AUD 10 million) in seed capital in their first-ever funding round. The round is one of Australia’s largest Seed rounds, and for AirTree Ventures, who led the round, it’s the biggest Seed cheque written in the fund’s history. This is a vote of confidence in the company’s labor-intensive “Event-as-a-Service” model, an offering that encompasses everything from software setup to live stream production.
Intrado Partners with Interprefy
August 19, 2021
By partnering with Interprefy, Intrado can now offer cloud-based remote simultaneous interpretation in up to 26 languages on its Studio platform. The multi-lingual audio content is added in real-time via overlay as audio tracks on video presentations and also comes with the ability to select different interpreted slide presentation formats.
Intrado Acquires Hubb
August 13, 2021 (financial details not disclosed)
With the acquisition of Hubb, Intrado will be looking to upgrade the functionality and design of its Intrado Studio platform and offer its clients an all-in-one solution for hybrid events. Intrado says that clients can deliver fully converged, omnichannel events after the integration is completed. Former Hubb CEO Allie Magyar becomes Intrado’s Chief Product Officer.
Juno Raises $3.5M in Seed Round Funding
August 11, 2021
Juno is a new player in the virtual event platform space, founded only in August 2020. The software company connects and educates people in virtual environments and a year-round events platform. The funding comes from Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insights Partners, and Walter Scott of TeamViewer. Juno co-founder and CEO Josh Hotsenpiller says the company will invest the funds in filling the void of “future-generation solutions that allow collaboration, networking and education.”
Hopin Raises $450M in Series D Funding at a $7.75B Valuation
August 5, 2021
Hopin is now valued at an eye-watering $7.75 billion. This round of funding for Hopin is co-led by Arena Holdings and Altimeter Capital. Hopin now has a workforce of 800 employees working remotely from 47 countries and boasts more than 100,000 clients using the platform.
Cvent Acquires Shoflo
August 2, 2021
Cvent‘s acquisition of Shoflo went under the radar even after Shoflo Founder & CEO Stephen Bowles shared the news on the Shoflo website. The company announced the release of Cvent Studio at its annual Cvent CONNECT® event on August 2. Cvent Studio has been developed based on Shoflo Studio, now fully integrated into Cvent’s Event Marketing and Management platform.
Zoom Invests in Cvent by Raising 10% of Equity
July 21, 2021
Zoom investing in Cvent could mean deeper collaboration between the two companies with potential product benefits for Cvent users. Zoom is currently agnostic when it comes to integration with virtual event platforms, but this could easily change in the future.
LiveControl Raises Series A Funding of $30 Million
July 21, 2021
LiveControl offers a budget-conscious option for live video streaming of events through remotely controlled 4K PTZ cameras. At a time when all event professionals are looking for cost-effective ways to deliver video-hungry hybrid experiences, this funding announcement could help make LiveControl a viable option for the event industry.
Cvent Going Public via Merger with a Special-Purpose Acquisition Company
20 July, 2021 ($5B valuation, including debt)
A massive valuation of one of the largest event tech (and venue finding) vendors. Cvent went public in a successful IPO in 2013 before going private in 2016 when it was acquired by current owners Vista Equity Partners. Another successful IPO could give Cvent the funds to make significant acquisitions.
Zoom Acquires Five9
July 18, 2021 ($14.7B in all-stock transaction)
The numbers surrounding this acquisition are enormous. This acquisition is expected to help enhance Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers by enabling them to optimize customer interactions across many different channels. Zoom is looking to integrate Five9’s Contact Center as a Service (“CCaaS”) solution to create a complete solution. Find more details on this deal on Skift.
Update: September 30, 2021
Five9 shareholders voted down the firm’s $14.7 billion sale to Zoom, in what would have been the virtual conferencing giant’s biggest-ever acquisition. Five9 will continue to operate as a standalone publicly traded company and Five9’s partnership with Zoom, in place prior to the announcement, will continue.
Bevy Acquires Eventtus
July 14, 2021 (financial details not disclosed)
By acquiring event management software company Eventtus, Bevy is able to offer a solution for hybrid and in-person events to its community-minded clients. Eventtus’ feature-rich mobile app and other engagement tools for attendees will soon be integrated into Bevy’s end-to-end white-labeled community event engine. The acquisition also adds 20 engineers from Eventtus team to Bevy, including Egyptian founders Mai Medhat and Nihal Fares, who bring with them 10 years of event technology and experience.
Cadmium Acquires EventRebels
July 9, 2021 (financial details not disclosed)
EventRebels is Cadmium’s fifth investment in its effort to provide an all-in-one event and learning platform solution. This acquisition follows previous acquisitions of CadmiumCD, EthosCE, Warpwire, and CommPartners. EventRebels adds configurable online and onsite event registration, membership authorization for conference and trade show attendees, and lead retrieval to the Cadmium platform.
mmhmm Raises $100M in Series B Funding
July 7, 2021
While some ridiculed the company’s name, Evernote ex-CEO Phil Libin has attracted impressive financial backing from big-name investors. Leading this $100M round is SoftBank Vision Fund, making $136M the total raised by mmhmm over the last year. The company is hiring rapidly and globally but the most interesting shift is the development of iOS and Android apps. This development suggests a shift from being a virtual camera tool that integrates into other video conferencing tools to a standalone video communication platform.
Hopin Acquires Attendify
July 7, 2021 (financial details not disclosed)
Hopin continues its acquisition spree, now adding integrated event marketing platform Attendify to its already significant list of acquisitions. This is the fifth this year alone. According to Hopin, this purchase is all about enhancing and expanding its event marketing suite as it strives to become the industry’s leading all-in-one platform. Hopin focuses on implementing two features from Attendify: Audience CRM, a comprehensive, attendee data platform used to capture engagement, identify intent signals and use event data to drive growth; and Campaign Manager, a powerful email engine to drive registrations and engage audiences between programs.
OnePlan Raises $3.8M in Series A Funding
June 30, 2021
Investors from the U.S. and UK are backing the two-year-old startup. The technology is focused solely on creating in-person events, a departure from the majority of recent event tech investments. The tool offers hyper-realistic and interactive 3D solutions used for collaborative real-time event design and production.
Intrado Digital Media and Encore Enter Strategic Partnership
June 29, 2021
Following the earlier announcement of Cvent’s partnership with Encore, Intrado Digital Media announced a similar strategic partnership. Encore is looking to partner with major players in event technology in the corporate event sector. The promoted upside to customers is the ability to “deliver enterprise-grade, fully integrated events”.
MeetingPlay Raises $75M in Private Equity Funding
June 17, 2021
MeetingPlay raised $75 million from growth-oriented private equity firm Sunstone Partners. The investment is being used to support a white-label approach that essentially makes MeetingPlay invisible to attendees. Sunstone will be taking an active role in growing the company that has a focus on the corporate events market.
Twine Raises $3.3M in Venture Funding
June 17, 2021
Twine announced the new round of venture funding along with new hires for key roles and a number of significant product updates. The system continues to be platform-agnostic and now has the capability to host up to five people in a networking room, a departure from the one-to-one nature of the product.
CLIPr Raises $4M Private Investment from Poly
June 15, 2021
Poly, a company with 50+ years of experience in making office-focused audio and video hardware, has invested in CLIPr, a video analysis and management (VAM) platform using AI and machine learning to index video content. It would appear that Poly sees CLIPr’s potential to help people save time and reduce video fatigue. Poly will initially utilize the platform internally as it explores further strategic opportunities.
Cvent and Encore Announce Strategic Partnership
June 15, 2021
Tech Giant Cvent is partnering with AV and event production specialist Encore to bridge the online and onsite production needs. As things return to relative normalcy and in-person events begin to fill supplier sales pipelines, this partnership is trying to redefine the term ‘end-to-end’.
Brella Raises $10M in Series A Funding
June 10, 2021
Brella was able to pivot its intent-driven intelligent matchmaking system to a virtual event platform in 2020. Despite 4x growth in 2020, it opted for additional funding to build further capabilities. Brella is keen to stay away from offering long lists of features to instead focus on its unique selling proposition as a networking-focused hybrid event platform.
Bizzabo Acquires x.ai
June 3, 2021
The acquisition of x.ai adds powerful AI scheduling & matchmaking capabilities. This points to a thoughtful set of meeting scheduling features that will be appreciated by participants, particularly if Bizzabo can crack the algorithms for smart networking recommendations.
Interactio Raises $30M in Series A Funding
May 25, 2021
Interactio offers remote simultaneous interpretation. Despite advances in automated captioning and AI-powered real-time translation, there appears to be strong demand for more accurate human interpretation from high-profile organizations such as the United Nations and the European Parliament. Also noteworthy is that Interactio is headquartered in Lithuania, and this is considered to be the largest-ever Series A round of funding in the Baltics.
Fireflies.ai Raises $14M in Series B Funding
May 24, 2021
Fireflies.ai’s meetings assistant promises to record, transcribe, and search across your voice conversations. With this investment, Fireflies is looking to automate post-meetings work. With the future of work certain to include online video interaction, Fireflies has the potential to improve how we work. The same techniques could significantly impact how we collect and manage information from virtual events.
Bizzabo Acquires Whalebone
May 24, 2021
A fascinating acquisition that adds somewhat unusual capabilities to Bizzabo’s end-to-end offering. The acquisition of Whalebone Crowd technology focused on humanizing digital interactions through crowd amplification and visualization.
Pitch Raises $85M in Series B Funding
May 20, 2021
Pitch is looking to become the world’s first complete platform for presentations. The company offers a full solution focused on pitch decks starting with sleek designs and powerful analytics features. Pitch’s features are a good fit for many types of events, although it does not seem that the event industry is on the company’s radar just yet.
Cisco Acquires Socio
May 12, 2021
After acquiring Q&A and polling platform Slido, Cisco announced the intent to acquire Socio Labs. The strategy is clear, the company is looking to offer a robust technology stack built around its recently relaunched Webex video conferencing tool that can seamlessly power virtual, hybrid, and in-person events.
Mighty Networks Raises $50M in Series B Funding
April 25, 2021
Might Networks is one of the leaders in the community platforms space. Although not directly involved in events, events are a part of its focus on the creator economy. It is using this investment to attract established creators to thrive on its platform and events are a big part of that.
Kudo Raises $21M in Series A Funding
March 31, 2021
KUDO describes itself as a cloud-based video conferencing platform with real-time multilingual interpretation. It sees a bright future in what it calls Language-as-a-Service (LaaS). After previously raising $6 million in seed funding in July 2020, its most recent investment round was oversubscribed. The company intended to raise $15 million but ended up raising $21 million, which it is looking to invest in talent acquisition. The interest from investors suggests that they see great potential for this type of offering in a post-pandemic future.
Cameo Raises $100M in Series C Funding
March 30, 2021
Cameo for Business is the B2B version of the company’s promise: “personalized videos feat. your favorite stars.” Hubilo used the service to have actor David Koechner provide guidance on pronouncing the company’s name while promoting its recent Restart 2021 virtual event. The company has made this part of the business one of its key focus points and shared that Cameo for Business is a multimillion-dollar business growing at a rate of 900% year on year.
Bevy Raises $40M in Series C Funding
March 24, 2021
Bevy prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion in this round of funding with a 70 percent Black investor pool. Co-founder of Black in Events, Keneisha Williams, highlights that this initiative leads the way for organizational success and inclusive solutions and explores this in more detail here.
Hopin Raises $400M in Series C Funding at a $5.65 B Valuation
March 4, 2021
Potentially the fastest growing startup of the pandemic raised the largest-ever round of funding and valuation in event tech. Hopin has since used the funds to acquire Boomset, a platform focused on onsite functionality and solutions. The platform had previously acquired mobile app Topi and video streaming platform StreamYard. It also made further acquisitions in the video innovation space in the form of Streamable and Jamm. More recently, Hopin received an investment of $50 million from LinkedIn that signaled the start of what could be a very interesting and unique strategic partnership.
Kaltura Announces (Delayed) IPO Filing
March 2, 2021
Kaltura, Inc., “the video experience cloud”, announced on March 2 that it had publicly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq. It later put the IPO on hold as the demand was lower than expected, prompting TechCrunch to question if the window for tech IPOs is closing. In this article, Devoncroft Partners analyses the IPO filing in great detail and raises concerns over the language used and valuation target. Kaltura appears to have since filed for an IPO again but has made no further announcements.
Hubilo Raises $23.5M in Series A Funding
February 23, 2021
Hubilo publicly shared the story of its near demise in 2020 and its reinvention as a virtual events platform. It has invested heavily in its own virtual events and overall marketing. The company was founded in Ahmedabad, India, in 2015 and is now headquartered in the U.S., and this investment represents a victory for the Indian startup ecosystem.
Grip Raises $13M in Series A Funding
February 18, 2021
Grip’s funding announcement centered around the concept of being the first market engagement platform. Its focus is on helping organizers find new and better ways to generate revenue from their events, be they virtual, hybrid, or in-person. It plans to do this by creating ways for organizers to monetize events through access, exposure, and contact.
InEvent Raises $2M in Seed Funding
February 8, 2021
A small round of funding when compared to others. Nevertheless, InEvent’s Brazilian-born founders are focused on conquering the B2B market by offering best-in-class customization and support.
Swapcard Acquires Avolio
January 14, 2021
Following a close collaboration between the two companies since the start of the pandemic, Swapcard’s acquisition of registration platform Avolio meant that it can now offer a complete end-to-end solution for its clients. This is a strategic move to deliver on the promise of becoming a single technology for virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face events.
Skift Financing Cheat Sheet
- Seed funding is money used to start a business, often led by angel investors and friends or family.
- Series A funding is typically drawn from venture capitalists. The round aims to help a startup’s founders make sure that their product is something that customers truly want to buy.
- Series B funding is mainly about venture capitalist firms helping a company grow faster. These fundraising rounds can assist in recruiting skilled workers and developing cost-effective marketing.
- Series C funding is ordinarily about helping a company expand, such as through acquisitions. In addition to VCs, hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity firms often participate.
- Series D, E and beyond apply mainly to mature businesses and the funding round may help a company prepare to go public or be acquired. A variety of types of private investors might participate.
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