Azureus, the most popular open-source BitTorrent client, which announced its intentions to go commercial a few months ago, similar to what has happened with the commercial company avatar of BitTorrent, has received $12 million in second round of funding. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures, and also included Greycroft Partners (Disclaimer: Our parent company’s investors as well); Jarl Mohn, Chairman, CNET, and former CEO of Liberty Digital and E Entertainment Television; and existing investor BV Capital. The company raised its first round a few months ago, and we wrote about it here.
The open-source client was first launched in 2003, among the first front-end clients for BitTorrent…the new commercial company, based in Palo Alto, CA, is headed by CEO Gilles Bian Rosa. Founder and CTO Olivier Chalouhi is also part of the commercial company.
Also today, the company has launched its public content distribution site/service Zudeo, and is trying to bring some of the features that have made sites such as YouTube popular: search, browsing, channels and tagging, etc.
12 million! Is that really needed and how do they expect to make money?