Leader in Virtual Investor Meetings and Conferences Concludes Record First Half of 2021, Meeting Strong Demand for Virtual Events and Roadshows
Boston, Massachusetts, June 30, 2021 — OpenExchange, the leader in video and virtual event solutions for financial communications, announced that it has completed an initial closing of nearly $23 million in Series D Preferred Stock to support both organic growth and complementary acquisitions to fortify its market leadership.
The funding round is led by Kingfisher Investment Advisors, a San Francisco-based venture growth fund focused on late-stage, high-growth technology companies, and by Stonebridge Ventures, a leading Korea-based venture fund with a global portfolio. It comes as OpenExchange completes another record quarter in managing virtual meetings and conferences, and has delivered the first hybrid investor events using its new OE VIZION platform.
“The pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of virtual meeting technologies, and OpenExchange has become a trusted partner to every major bank as they apply those technologies to meetings that matter,” said CEO Mark Loehr. “As restrictions are relaxed and in-person events resume, clients tell us through our research that they’ll continue to offer virtual attendance and presentation options for the majority of their conferences. And some sectors, like capital markets roadshows, expect to stay primarily virtual.”
“Virtual investor communications are here to stay, and OpenExchange is at the very top of the game in virtual meetings, conferences, roadshows, and events,” said Kingfisher Investment Managing Partner Alex Bernstein. “We were attracted by OpenExchange’s technology, team, market positioning and growth strategy, and look forward to helping them extend their position as one of the top global companies in the sector.”
The new investment will support further development of OpenExchange’s recently-announced OE VIZION, a next-generation platform for virtual and hybrid events, as well as complementary acquisitions in content development, meeting logistics, media streaming, and data analytics. During the quarter, OE VIZION began delivering multiple hybrid events, involving both virtual and remote attendees and presenters.
The first half of 2021 continued to see very strong growth in the volume of meetings and events hosted on the OpenExchange platform. During that time, OpenExchange managed 313 conferences and 84,957 virtual meetings in the first half for every one of the top ten global investment banks, as well as four stock exchanges. This represented year-over year growth of 170% and 250% in conferences and meetings, respectively. Capital markets meetings, such as IPO roadshows, SPAC roadshows, “test the waters” sessions, and debt offerings, showed particularly strong growth, jumping more than tenfold above Q4 levels. OpenExchange delivered more than 52 million minutes of content on its Knovio streaming video platform, and connected more than 1.7 million investors, bankers, and corporate executives into virtual presentations and meetings.
OpenExchange was advised by FT Partners in the investment transaction.
About OpenExchange
Based in Boston, New York, London, Hong Kong and Seoul, OpenExchange video-enables the vital daily communications of the financial services and professional investment industry and its clients with advanced one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many video technologies, tools and services. Anchored by its experience in connecting more than 100,000 video endpoints in the professional investment community and more than 500,000 registered users to its Knovio video platform, the OpenExchange Network bridges the worlds of real-time videoconferencing, video live-streaming, and searchable on-demand video archives and showcases, making it easy to connect, create, disseminate, and discover information critical to investment and business decisions.
