San Francisco-based Tubi TV has raised an additional $20 million for its advertising-supported streaming service for TV and movies. Investors in the round are betting on the fact that the next big streaming competitor won’t be a direct rival to Netflix and others with a subscription-based business model, but rather a free service that offers a wide variety of titles for free viewing.
The Series B round was led by Jump Capital, and includes participation from Tubi TV’s Series A investor Foundation Capital, as well as Danhua Capital and Cota Capital. With this current round, the company’s total raise to date is $34 million.
Launched in 2014, Tubi TV today has 200 content partners, including Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Starz and others, bringing its catalog of shows and movies to over 50,000 titles. However, not all titles are available at any given time — the selection is rotated and updated to make the content feel fresh.
The company also claims millions of users, and 9x growth in monthly active users in 2016, compared with the year before.
The titles on Tubi TV aren’t necessarily the hottest, or most in-demand new releases, but include a number of big-name hits from years past. For example, the app’s featured selection right now includes the 2000 film “Gladiator,” 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” 2011’s “Young Adult,” 2010’s “True Grit” and 2008’s “Revolutionary Road,” among others.
But for Tubi TV’s targeted audience — millennial viewers — these movies may not be new, but they’re new to them. Younger millennials, for example, were born in the mid-1990s or early 2000s —…