Elemental Technologies, a provider of video-encoding solutions for multiscreen delivery, has raised $13 million in series C financing led by Norwest Venture Partners to hire more sales staff and expand the company's product offerings.
Existing investors General Catalyst, Voyager Capital and Walt Disney Co.'s Steamboat Ventures also participated in the round. The funding brings Portland, Ore.-based Elemental to about $30 million raised since it was founded in 2006.
Elemental's customers include Comcast, ESPN, HBO, Avail-TVN, ABC News, Big Ten Network, CBS Interactive, National Geographic, PBS and Oceanic Time Warner Cable in Hawaii.
In addition, Elemental announced that it has appointed Kevin O'Hara, former president and c-founder of Level 3 Communications, as chairman of the board. O'Hara replaces co-founder Sam Blackman, who will remain CEO. O'Hara joined Elemental's board in January 2011.
Unlike video-encoding systems that use purpose-built hardware, Elemental's Linux-based products use off-the-shelf, programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) for compute-intensive video processing and conversion tasks.
