Quibi, the upcoming mobile-only streaming service led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, has raised an additional $750 million in funding, a rep for the company confirmed to TheWrap.
The latest raise comes about a month before the service’s official April 6 debut. Altogether, Quibi has now raised $1.75 billion, following an initial $1 billion investment when the company was founded in 2018.
Quibi did not share who is involved with the latest round of funding.
“We are pleased to close this second round of funding as we prepare for our launch next month. We have strong content and an app design and user interface which is resonating with early users,” Whitman said in a statement. “We found significant interest from long-term investors in the financial, distribution and content arenas who were excited to participate in this round. We are also excited about all of our launch advertising partners which include: Procter & Gamble, T-Mobile, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Walmart, Progressive, Google, Taco Bell, Discover and General Mills.”
The new service is set to release 175 shows within its first year; it’ll cost $4.99 per month for ad-supported streaming and $7.99 for ad-free service. To attract subscribers, Quibi has greenlit shows from a who’s who of stars, including: Steven Spielberg, Lorne Michaels, Justin Timberlake, Bill Murray, Jennifer Lopez, John Travolta, Kris and Kendall Jenner and Stephen Curry, among others.
Led by Whitman, its chief executive, and Katzenberg, Quibi is looking to separate itself from a growing list of streaming services by making episodes that are a maximum of 10 minutes long. (Quibi is short for “quick bites.”) In a recent interview with TheWrap, Katzenberg said Quibi isn’t worried about competition from services like Disney+ when it comes to winning over subscribers.
“We’re in a marathon, not a sprint,” Katzenberg said. “Disney+ is a 100-year brand with the most valued and important generational IP on earth, ever. We’re a different use case, and we don’t have the same brand recognition. So we don’t think we’ll take off like a rocketship. We think it’s something we build over the course of several years.”