Wowza Media Systems Partners Up With Private Equity Firm Clearhaven Partners

Investment expected to accelerate Wowza's cloud product innovation and video streaming solutions

Wowza Media Systems, the provider of low-latency streaming and video delivery solutions, has received an investment from software and technology specialist Clearhaven Partners.

According to an official statement from the company, the partnership with the Boston-based equity firm will pave the way for “continued innovation and accelerated growth.”

Founded in 2007, Wowza has established itself as a formidable player in the development of live streaming solutions It’s grown to innovate in cloud and private infrastructure-based solutions that enable customers to deliver video at scale across geographies and end markets, including media and entertainment and sports.

“We’ve been creating change of ourselves for the past couple of years,” David Stubenvoll, co-founder and CEO of Wowza said to SVG. “As we’ve gone from self-service components to more full-service solutions and begun to build our go-to-market capabilities [Wowza has always heavily focused on  inbound], that change has been good.  There’s been pluses and minuses in live streaming due to the pandemic but we’ve been able to prove that we can turn this model, make changes, and get more directly focused in driving our customer’s success with bigger and bigger deals. How we want to create the future has changed an that’s what caused us to seek out a private equity investor. This is the right fit for us.”

“Clearhaven has long invested behind a thesis in video technology as we seek to partner with leading companies that solve mission-critical challenges and address opportunities arising from video proliferation,” Michelle C. Noon, managing partner and co-founder at Clearhaven Partners said in the official announcement of the deal. “Wowza is an incredible founder-built organization that does exactly that. We’re thrilled to partner with CEO Dave Stubenvoll, COO Brendan Daly and the Wowza management team to fuel continued innovation and accelerated growth.”

Clearhaven Partners managing partner Chris Ryan added in the announcement: “As dedicated software and technology investors, we seek to partner with differentiated and scalable companies,” added  “Among many companies we see each year, Wowza stood out to us due to its reputation as a technology leader and its ability to deliver market leading video streaming solutions at scale in a market with significant tailwinds.”

As of publish date, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.