With $200M+ Investment Led by PSG, Backlight Announces Company Launch and Five Media Tech Acquisitions

Cloud-based media software leaders ftrack, iconik, Celtx, Wildmoka and Zype to invest in innovation and customer success as Backlight business units

Lexington, MA(12 Apr 2022)

Backlight, a media technology company, today announced its company launch and the strategic acquisitions of five innovative and fast-growing media software businesses: ftrack, iconik, Celtx, Wildmoka, and Zype. Backed by a $200M+ investment led by PSG, a leading growth equity firm partnering with middle-market software and technology-enabled services companies to help accelerate their growth, Backlight’s mission is to serve media, entertainment, and video-forward customers with cloud-based solutions that dramatically improve every step of the media content lifecycle. The investment also intends to support Backlight’s pursuit of additional add-on acquisitions of technology platforms that serve the media content lifecycle.

“I believe the explosion and democratization of content creation, combined with the incredible growth and fragmentation of consumption, have created massive complexity and new opportunities for creatives and content owners,” said Ben Kaplan, president and CEO of Backlight. “The market is demanding innovative, flexible, cloud-based solutions to modernize media workflows. With five incredible business units, each led by visionary CEOs delivering compelling, differentiated solutions, Backlight is well positioned to be a trusted partner for customers with mission-critical creative processes and video pipelines.”

Exceptional visual storytelling is created with the best possible tools and solutions. Backlight is supercharging its business units with resources and investment in talent, product development, innovation and infrastructure that will help their customers create the next great generation of content experiences for audiences.

Backlight Business Units:

• ftrack is the creator of ftrack Studio, cineSync, and ftrack Review, the Emmy and Academy Award-winning production tracking, interactive media review, and team collaboration platforms for the creative industries. ftrack’s solutions are designed for producers, supervisors, artists, and pipeline developers to collaborate with anyone, anywhere.
• iconik is a cloud-native, SaaS media management solution that is designed for users to share files from any storage, collaborate on video, and enrich media with AI for high searchability—all with great ease and the ability to scale to serve solo creators or large global teams.
• Celtx is an award-winning all-in-one solution for writing, planning, and managing media production that is used by millions worldwide. Celtx provides pre-production planning software, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, shot-planning, and budgeting, to in-house production teams, agencies, film schools and universities, game studios, and media & entertainment companies.
• Wildmoka is a leading platform for the creation of live and near-live content in Sports, News, and Entertainment. It has won several awards for its AutoReZone technology, which helps broadcasters provide a mobile-first experience. Wildmoka’s cloud-native Digital Media Factory aims to empower broadcasters and rights owners to produce and deliver content from any source, to any destination, in any format, at speed, and at scale.
• Zype’s award winning technology provides the infrastructure for digital video with a cloud-based platform to manage and distribute enterprise-grade video across the web, mobile, TV, and social media. Offering both developer-friendly tools such as customizable APIs as well as turnkey solutions for OTT apps and linear/FAST channels, Zype’s SaaS solutions enable video creators or distributors to quickly build, launch, and manage superior video products at scale.

“There is a large market opportunity to improve the way content producers, owners and distributors create value, starting with the media and entertainment industry but extending to any enterprise investing in rich media and video,” said Matt Stone, managing director at PSG. “Our investment in Backlight reflects our conviction in the market, the team, and a vision of a modern media production lifecycle, from ideation to monetization.”

About Backlight

Backlight is a media technology company that improves video content ideation, production, post production and distribution. Launched in 2022 with funding from PSG, Backlight acquired media software businesses ftrack, Celtx, iconik, Wildmoka and Zype. Video-forward organizations utilize Backlight to solve their mission-critical business and operational challenges. Visit www.backlight.co for more information.

About PSG

PSG is a growth equity firm that partners with software and technology-enabled services companies to help them navigate transformational growth, capitalize on strategic opportunities and build strong teams. Having backed more than 95 companies and facilitated over 375 add-on acquisitions, PSG brings extensive investment experience, deep expertise in software and technology and a firm commitment to collaborating with management teams. Founded in 2014, PSG operates out of offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Paris, Madrid and Tel-Aviv. To learn more about PSG, visit www.psgequity.com.