Roku receives $45 million strategic investment

Roku today announced that it has received a $45 million strategic investment from News Corporation, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), Menlo Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and an unnamed investor. This investment and new relationships reportedly “demonstrate the industry’s confidence in Roku as the distribution platform to bring streaming entertainment to mainstream consumers”.

As to what Roku will be doing with the money – it will be building further brand awareness through advertising, developing new international markets, and increase engineering and production to support sales growth for its hardware and digital media services (advertising, games, transactional and pay-per-view video and content packages). Roku also announced that its Streaming Stick will be arriving this fall. It looks like good things are happening for the company, and we should expect Roku to get a lot bigger this year.

[Press Release (PDF)]