DivX, Inc.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DivX, Inc. (formerly DivXNetworks, Inc.), based in San Diego, California, is the company behind the popular MPEG-4 codec, DivX. The company became publicly traded on NASDAQ after an initial public offering in September 2006.
| DivX, Inc. | |
| Type | Public (NASDAQ: DIVX) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, USA |
| Revenue | $33 million USD (2005) [1] |
| Website | www.divx.com/ |
Contents |
[edit] History
When Jerome Rota (aka Gej) made the codec available on his personal website after he had reverse-engineered the Microsoft MPEG-4 V3 codec, it became popular because it enabled reasonable quality video transmission over the internet (see DivX). In early 2000, Jordan Greenhall, a former Mp3.com executive, put forward the idea of using the technology to found a company. With co-founders Joe Bezdek, Darrius Thompson and Tay Nguyen, DivXNetworks, Inc. was created. After coming under scrutiny for their original "DivX ;-)" codec, which was not a clean room design codec, DivXNetworks created a new version of the codec and several members of the original "Project Mayo" team left the DivX team, as they preferred to work on an open source codec rather than a commercialized one.
Project Mayo now developed OpenDivX, and several ex-members went on to help create the XviD codec.
[edit] Investment
In September 2000, Zone Ventures of Los Angeles, California, as well as Tim Draper and several other investors from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson family of funds provided the initial round of investment. On June 4 2002, DivXNetworks received an additional $6 million. Zone Ventures was again one of the largest investors, deriving funds from the WI Harper group. Draper Atlantic and the Wasatach Venture Fund also invested, and Tim Draper made another personal investment. At the time, this put DivX's total equity financing at over $11.5 million. In May 2004, DivX raised an additional round of $7 million, investors included Draper-affiliate Zone Ventures, WI Harper Group, Draper Atlantic, Wasatch Venture Fund, Springboard-Harper, Tim Draper, Cardinal Venture Capital, ALi Corporation, and Cyberlink International Technology Corp. In October 2005, the company announced closing a $17 million round from Insight Venture Partners.
[edit] Awards
DivXNetworks received awards in the AlwaysOn "100 Top Innovators" and the "Red Herring 100 Top Private Companies" in 2004. Jordan Greenhall was also featured in the BridgeGate "20 Awards 2002" list.
[edit] Products
In addition to the DivX codec itself, DivX, Inc. licenses its codec for portable DivX players and DivX compatible DVD players.
