On-demand podcast provider Acast has announced a Series B funding round worth $19.5 million. The company, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with additional offices in New York, London and Sydney, won the round from Swedish investors including Ny Teknik, Microcap, Target and Select.
The round brings Acast, which was founded in 2014 by Karl Rosander and Mans Ulvestam, up to just over $32m in investment. This latest injection will help its engineering team expand its audio-on-demand audio suite–and to grow its presence in the US market.
Acast has been utilized by over 2,000 content creators, which attract around 56m listens per month. Major media brands like VICE, The Financial Times, The Football Ramble and The Economist all release content alongside the company.
“Acast is fundamentally changing the global radio landscape as we know it,” said Rosander. “The content environment is shifting quickly and as radio becomes less and less relevant, audio-on-demand will take its place.”
Podcasting has risen to become a key content creation method in a short space of time. Over 67m Americans listen to podcasts each month, an increase of 21% year-on-year. Worldwide, podcast subscriptions passed 1bn back in 2013.
Acast’s funding success brings added focus on Stockholm, a city that, despite a population of 1.4m is proving that size matters little when it comes to growing internationally-renowned tech brands. Other heavyweights from the Swedish capital include Klarna, Spotify and Mojang.
“Sweden is home to many of the world’s top streaming services, and Acast is no exception,” said co-founder Ulvestam. “The Scandinavian culture of early adoption coupled with an incredible network of sophisticated investors that see the value in new services and in pushing boundaries made it an easy choice to build and grow our business here.”