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Vivox Inc. has received $6.8 million in new venture capital to expand its Internet voice software beyond its current customer base of video game companies into several flavors of online social interaction, the company reports.
Led by new investor IDG Ventures San Francisco, the round, Vivox’s third, brings the Natick-based company’s total financing to at least $19.6 million. Previous investors include Wellesley-based GrandBanks Capital and Menlo Park, Calif.-based VC firms Benchmark Capital and Canaan Partners.
Co-founded in 2005 by Vonage Inc. co-founder Jeff Pulver, Vivox currently has about 35 employees, with plans to grow past 50 in the next 12 to 18 months, CEO and co-founder Rob Seaver reports. Pulver is now Vivox’s chairman. Seaver wouldn’t disclose revenue but said the company has about 20 million users and is processing about 3 billion minutes of voice chat each month — a usage rate that has grown 50 percent in the past 45 days, powered by a handful of customer wins during the second half of 2009.
In the second half of 2009, Vivox inked customer deals with game-makers Nexon, Gaia, Hi-Rez Studios and Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq: ERTS), Seaver said. But he sees huge potential for future growth in opportunities like the voice chat application it rolled out for Facebook last year, now in beta. In the first half of 2010, the company expects to make customer announcements in social-media spaces including social networks and social shopping.
“The trend that’s most exciting for us is (the web) becoming more social,” Seaver said. “That represents an explosive opportunity for us. We see a real opportunity to expand beyond games into other forms of social media.”
Vivox is currently hiring developers and support staff and plans to add employees in sales and marketing, as well, Seaver said. IDG Ventures managing director Phil Sanderson will take a seat on Vivox’s board.
Vice president and co-founder Monty Sharma said the company will be building ways for voice-enabled web applications to replace traditional voice capabilities on mobile devices. “The dialpad is a horrific interface,” he said. “The phone system was built to work over copper wires 100 years ago.” Instead, mobile users now are beginning to want voice integrated into the same rich web applications they are using from their personal computers.
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