Pluto Media
Pluto Media develops products that foster children’s creativity, curiosity, and knowledge of the world around them.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
| investor investor investor | €0.0 | round | |
$1.2m | Seed | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
There is no public information available for a startup named 'Pluto Media' or 'Plutonic Games' involved in educational children's games and associated with the Studio 9+ accelerator. The provided web domains, plutonicgames.com and pluto-media.com, are not active or do not lead to a company matching the description.
However, there is a well-documented and successful company named Pluto Inc., which operates the popular streaming service Pluto TV. This company was founded in 2013 by Tom Ryan, Ilya Pozin, and Nick Grouf. The initial concept, sparked by Pozin's frustration with finding child-appropriate content on YouTube for his daughter, was to create a service that mimicked the traditional, lean-back television experience. This involved curating online videos into thematic, linear channels. The platform launched its beta website on March 31, 2014, and initially aggregated content from sources like YouTube, Vimeo, and various digital media companies.
Pluto TV's business model is centered on being a free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service. Revenue is generated entirely from showing commercials during programming, with a revenue-sharing model, often a 50/50 split, with its content partners. The service is free for users, requiring no subscription or even registration, which was a counter-intuitive strategy when subscription-based models like Netflix were dominant. This approach proved successful, attracting millions of monthly users and significant investor funding, totaling over $51 million from backers including Samsung Venture Investment, Sky plc, and others.
A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by Viacom in January 2019 for $340 million in cash. This acquisition allowed Pluto TV to integrate Viacom's vast content library, including channels from MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon, and to accelerate its international expansion. Post-acquisition, the company continued to operate as an independent subsidiary led by CEO Tom Ryan. Pluto TV has since become a key part of Paramount Global's (formerly ViacomCBS) direct-to-consumer strategy, reaching 80 million monthly active users by 2023.
Keywords: Pluto TV, Pluto Inc., Tom Ryan, Ilya Pozin, Nick Grouf, free ad-supported streaming television, FAST, video streaming, Viacom, Paramount Global, streaming service, online video, digital media, content curation, ad-supported VOD, linear channels, television streaming, media acquisition.