Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the Future Decoded Tech Summit in Bengaluru, India, on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020. Microsoft will open a new data-center region in Spain, expanding their strategic partnership with Telefonica SA, according the the statement by Telefonica.
Photographer: Samyukta Lakshmi/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft said Tuesday it has acquired Clipchamp, a start-up with software that consumers and corporate workers can use to edit videos. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The technology lines up with Microsoft’s years-long effort to widen its productivity software offerings for both individuals and corporate users. When Microsoft announced upcoming price increases for its Office 365 subscriptions in August, it pointed to additions to the bundle, including the Teams communication app.
While Clipchamp offers a Windows app, part of the service’s power is its ability to draw on online computing resources.
“Clipchamp’s technical approach is to combine the simplicity of a web app with the ability to process video using the full computing power of a PC with graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration, something that was formerly limited to traditional video applications,” Chris Pratley, corporate vice president for the Office Media Group at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.
The Clipchamp services are not yet available through a Microsoft licensing program, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
“As we get further through the integration planning, we will have a process to eventually convert existing Clipchamp users/customers to Microsoft subscribers,” the spokesperson said.
Clipchamp was founded in 2013, is based in Brisbane, Australia, and has 92 employees, according to LinkedIn data. Investors include Ten13 and Tola Capital.
In July Clipchamp said it had 17 million registered users, with adoption at over 390,000 companies, up 54% year over year. The Clipchamp website says Deloitte, Google, Microsoft and Zendesk are among the companies that use its software.
The start-up reported 140% growth in exports in the 9:16 aspect ratio, which works with Facebook’s Instagram Stories and TikTok. People also used Clipchamp for screen recording and webcam recording. As the pandemic continued in the second quarter, Facebook said it had 3.51 billion monthly users of its family of apps, up 12% year over year.
The announcement comes three weeks after Adobe said it was acquiring Frame.io, whose software allows people to comment on videos during the editing process, for $1.275 billion. Microsoft itself has demonstrated an interest in video before, having participated in talks last year to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations. TikTok wound up deciding not to go forward with that deal. And in 2018 Microsoft acquired education-oriented video start-up Flipgrid.
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