Bitfocus heads to the future with new investment

Bitfocus, the specialist in media control and monitoring, has received a further boost to its plans for continuing growth, particularly in Europe and North America. CORSAIR Gaming Inc (Nasdaq CRSR) has made a minority investment into the business, adding further resources.

Corsair is a leading provider of high-performance equipment for gamers, streamers and content creators. That includes Elgato, a long-term Bitfocus partner, providing hardware control surfaces which are ideally paired with the company’s software. The original Bitfocus platform, Companion, became known as the perfect partner for the Elgato Stream Deck. Buttons, the enterprise-class platform built on Companion, continues that symbiotic relationship, with the Stream Deck Studio now the first hardware controller specifically designed for use with Buttons in a professional media environment.

Buttons is a powerful workflow designer and software-defined management layer, bringing complex multi-vendor technology stacks under simple, logical, secure, reliable control. It is now widely used across the media industry, in AV installations and events, corporate and houses of worship systems, and in the most critical broadcast applications.

Premium sports broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic rely on Buttons to provide intuitive, secure and flexible control of dynamic media technology systems to deliver rich content to audiences. The Bitfocus Connections Program ensures key technology partners are closely involved with the continuing evolution of Buttons, with leading media technology vendors including Sony, Sennheiser, Bolin and Utah Scientific already playing an active role.

“Buttons has really hit the sweet spot with broadcasters, streaming services and production companies,” said Ole-Andreas Løvland, Bitfocus CEO. “We are in a really exciting place, working with some of the most high-profile names in the industry. Bringing in additional investment from Corsair will go a long way to support our continued growth, ensuring we can provide the development resources we need to keep up with our growth, as well as supporting users in the US and Europe.

“What Corsair brings – and a generic investment company would not – is a real understanding of the fast-changing media market,” Løvland said. “Through sharing experiences we will accelerate innovation in both companies to meet the growing demands of the industry, but at the same time Bitfocus will remain an independent business, controlling its own destiny, and most important committed to the open ecosystem which has been our core since the very beginnings of Companion.”

Thi La, CEO of Corsair, added “In formalizing our relationship with Bitfocus we can benefit from doing R&D and a shared go-to-market approach. Bitfocus brings remarkable skills and experience to the table, and we are excited by the prospects of sharing in its continuing success.”