Iconik Announces its Acquisition by Backlight, a New Global Media Technology Company

Backed by $200M in funding, Backlight will invest in iconik aiming to drive innovation and customer success in media asset management

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STOCKHOLM (April 12, 2022) -  Iconik®, an innovative cloud-native, SaaS media asset management solution, today announced it has been acquired by Backlight, a global media technology holding company backed by PSG, a leading growth equity firm partnering with software and technology-enabled services companies. Earlier today, Backlight announced the acquisition of iconik and four other visionary media technology companies, all serving media, entertainment and video-forward customers with cloud-based solutions that helps improve every step of the media content lifecycle.

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“Iconik has seen strong organic growth over the last few years, and we believe Backlight’s investment will benefit our customers by allowing us to scale our product development and customer success to another level,” said iconik co-founder and CEO, Parham Azimi. “We’re very excited about this next phase of our company’s growth, and we feel it’s going to result in  incredible benefits for iconik users.” 

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Iconik’s solution gathers and organizes media securely from any storage and provides tools for hassle-free media collaboration and powerful automation features. The solution is a true SaaS play in media asset management (MAM), following best practices for deploying platforms in the cloud with scalability in mind. 

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“What I admire most about Parham and the entire iconik team is their deep knowledge of customer needs and compelling vision for the future of media workflows,” said Ben Kaplan, CEO of Backlight. “As the video creation and distribution markets increasingly adopt cloud-native software, we believe iconik is not only well-positioned to lead the market, but can support clients in hybrid, ‘bring your own storage’ models. It is exciting to partner with the iconik team and have them be a part of Backlight.”

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Iconik is joined by four other fast growing media tech companies that were also acquired by Backlight and received a strategic growth investment from PSG. All five companies are operating as business units as part of Backlight.

• ftrack is the creator of ftrack Studio, cineSync, and ftrack Review, the Emmy and Academy Award-winning production tracking, interactive media review, and team collaboration platforms for the creative industries. ftrack’s solutions are designed for producers, supervisors, artists, and pipeline developers to collaborate with anyone, anywhere.
• Celtx’s all-in-one solution for writing, planning, and managing media production is used by millions worldwide. Celtx provides pre-production planning software, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, shot-planning and budgeting, to in-house production teams, agencies, film schools and universities, game studios, and media & entertainment companies.
• Wildmoka is a leading platform for the creation of live and near-live content in Sports, News and Entertainment. Its cloud-native Digital Media Factory aims to empower broadcasters and rights owners to produce and deliver content from any source, to any destination, in any format, at speed and at scale. 
• Zype provides infrastructure for digital video with a cloud-based platform to manage and distribute enterprise-grade video across the web, mobile, TV, and social media. Offering both developer-friendly tools such as customizable APIs as well as turnkey solutions for OTT apps and linear/FAST channels, Zype’s SaaS solutions enable video creators or distributors to quickly build, launch and manage superior video products at scale.

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About iconik

Iconik® is a cloud-native, SaaS media management solution that is designed for users to share files from any storage, collaborate on video, and enrich media with AI for high searchability—and it can scale to serve solo creators or large global teams. The platform enables users to manage their rich media assets—such as video, audio, imagery, podcasts, etc.—as well as to collaborate with lightweight review and approval tools, including commenting and annotating.

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About Backlight

Backlight is a media technology company that improves video content ideation, production, post production and distribution. Launched in 2022 with funding from PSG, Backlight acquired media software businesses ftrack, Celtx, iconik, Wildmoka and Zype. Video-forward organizations utilize Backlight to solve their mission-critical business and operational challenges. Visit www.backlight.co for more information.

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About PSG

PSG is a growth equity firm that partners with software and technology-enabled services companies to help them navigate transformational growth, capitalize on strategic opportunities and build strong teams. Having backed more than 95 companies and facilitated over 375 add-on acquisitions, PSG brings extensive investment experience, deep expertise in software and technology and a firm commitment to collaborating with management teams. Founded in 2014, PSG operates out of offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Paris, Madrid and Tel-Aviv. To learn more about PSG, visit www.psgequity.com.

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Contact:

Hotwire for Backlight (and iconik)

BacklightUS@hotwireglobal.com

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