With $200M+ investment led by PSG, American media technology company Backlight has announced its acquisitions of 5 innovative and fast-growing media software businesses including two Swedish SaaS companies ftrack and Iconik alongside Wildmoka from France, Celtx from Canada and Zype from USA.
ftrack announces its acquisition by Backlight, a new global media technology company
ftrack, the developer of Academy Award and Emmy-winning project management and media review solutions for the creative industries, today announced that it has been acquired by Backlight, a global media technology holding company backed by a leading growth equity firm, PSG. Earlier today, Backlight announced the acquisition of ftrack and four other visionary media technology companies, all serving media, entertainment and video-forward customers with cloud-based solutions that dramatically improve every step of the media content lifecycle.
“Over the last 10 years, our goal at ftrack has always been to help content creators tell unforgettable stories by powering best-in-class collaborations and streamlining processes,” said ftrack founder and CEO Fredrik Limsäter.
“As such, we are thrilled to join forces with Backlight and grow our technology through PSG’s strategic investment. ftrack, Backlight, and the four other forward-thinking brands in the Backlight family, share a passion for innovation, fostering fluid collaboration, and solving operational challenges in the creative industries.
We believe we are now better positioned than ever to evolve our media review and team collaboration solutions and deliver innovations that will enable our customers to create even more extraordinary work in the years ahead.”
ftrack is the developer of the ftrack Studio, cineSync, and ftrack Review, which are designed from the ground up to unleash the potential, productivity, and progress of creative projects. ftrack was founded in 2012 by film post-production veteran Fredrik Limsäter, and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. ftrack’s customers are found in 60 countries worldwide and regularly win prestigious awards for work across film, streamed content, linear broadcasting, virtual production, gaming, animation, advertising, VR, AR, and more.
“The team at CoSA are thrilled to see this new stage of ftrack’s growth,” said Jeremy Moore, Head of Production at CoSA VFX. “CoSA counts on our partnership with the ftrack team and their software package’s robust feature-set to make our day-to-day VFX operations smoother and simpler. I’m incredibly thrilled about what ftrack’s strategic growth plan can bring to the product, and I’m looking forward to the roadmap of next phases for their toolset.”
ftrack’s industry-trusted project management and production tracking platform, ftrack Studio, was awarded a Technical Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in February 2021 for contributions to filmmaking and post-production. cineSync, ftrack’s desktop-based media review solution, also won a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy in 2011 and a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in 2018.
“When we first met with Fredrik and the ftrack team, we were blown away by their vision and amazing achievements,” stated Ben Kaplan, CEO of Backlight. “We are excited to help the team invest in innovation and remove the barriers for creative and customer success. We believe there is a massive opportunity for ftrack to scale rapidly and we are excited to partner with such a great team.”
Iconik Announces its Acquisition by Backlight, a New Global Media Technology Company
Backed by $200M in funding, Backlight will invest in iconik aiming to drive innovation and customer success in media asset management
Iconik®, an innovative cloud-native, SaaS media asset management solution, today announced it has been acquired by Backlight, a global media technology holding company backed by PSG, a leading growth equity firm partnering with software and technology-enabled services companies. Earlier today, Backlight announced the acquisition of iconik and four other visionary media technology companies, all serving media, entertainment and video-forward customers with cloud-based solutions that helps improve every step of the media content lifecycle.
“Iconik has seen strong organic growth over the last few years, and we believe Backlight’s investment will benefit our customers by allowing us to scale our product development and customer success to another level,” said iconik co-founder and CEO, Parham Azimi. “We’re very excited about this next phase of our company’s growth, and we feel it’s going to result in incredible benefits for iconik users.”
Iconik’s solution gathers and organizes media securely from any storage and provides tools for hassle-free media collaboration and powerful automation features. The solution is a true SaaS play in media asset management (MAM), following best practices for deploying platforms in the cloud with scalability in mind.
“What I admire most about Parham and the entire iconik team is their deep knowledge of customer needs and compelling vision for the future of media workflows,” said Ben Kaplan, CEO of Backlight. “As the video creation and distribution markets increasingly adopt cloud-native software, we believe iconik is not only well-positioned to lead the market, but can support clients in hybrid, ‘bring your own storage’ models. It is exciting to partner with the iconik team and have them be a part of Backlight.”
ftrack and Iconik are joined by three other fast-growing media tech companies that were also acquired by Backlight and received strategic growth investment from PSG. All five companies are operating as business units as part of Backlight.
- Iconik is a cloud-native, SaaS media management solution that allows 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’s all-in-one solution for writing, planning, and managing media production 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. Its 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 provides 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.
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.
