French streaming startup Quortex raises $2.8m

French live-streaming tech startup Quortex has raised €2.5m ($2.8m) in seed capital in a funding round co-led by Elaia and Go Capital with the participation of Unexo and Business Angels.

The company, whose technology is currently used by clients including French commercial broadcaster M6 and UK media services outfit Red Bee, is focusing on cost-effective live streaming.

It said that the funding round would enable it to advance its technology and extend its just-in-time cloud platform, which is built around microservices.

Rennes-based Quortex, which was founded in 2018 by Marc Baillavoine, Jérôme Viéron, Julien Villeret and Thierry Trolez, said that the streaming market was rapidly growing but that existing systems did not allow for massive scaling up. It said that the Paris Olympics in 2024 would be the first big event where the streaming audience exceeded that viewing over traditional distribution mechanisms.

“Rather than create content without knowing if will be consumed and thus monopolising resources uselessly, our cloud solution allows you to stay with the real needs of consumers, scaling up massively if necessary, but also reducing the carbon footprint to the strict minimum in the case of failure,” said Viéron, technology director and co-founder.

“Streaming is often seen as a menace for the internet as it consumes 80% of the bandwidth. On the contrary it’s a unique opportunity and the technical constraints of streaming have to be exploited: our patented technology allows you to personalise content consumed by subscribers, both in terms of quality of distribution and in terms of content, and to produce as many channels of television as there are subscribers,” said Ballavoine, co-founder and president.