Angel Studios, Streaming Platform Behind \u201cThe Chosen\u201d, Raises $47 Million Investment Led by Gigafund to Give Hollywood a Remake
(Provo, UT\u2014January 5, 2021) Angel Studios, the streaming platform behind the most successful crowdfunded shows of all time, has raised $47 million to bring control of the entertainment industry back to consumers and creators. The round caps off a major comeback year for cofounders Neal and Jeffrey Harmon, who led Angel Studios to over $100 million in annual revenue just one year after Disney and Warner Bros. tried to shut the studio down in court.
The financing was led by Gigafund, a venture capital firm backing the world\u2019s most ambitious and transformative entrepreneurs, and Bain-backed Uncorrelated Ventures, which invests in infrastructure software. Gigafund is known for being one of the largest investors in SpaceX, as well as other game-changing companies in industries ranging from education and energy to healthcare and housing. Original seed investors Alta Ventures and Kickstart Fund also participated. In addition to the venture backing, five million of the investment round was crowdsourced directly from Angel Studios fans.
\u201cAngel Studios helps creators build a direct relationship with their fans and produce meaningful and compelling content for hundreds of millions of people who have been underserved by the entertainment industry,\u201d said Stephen Oskoui, Managing Partner of Gigafund. \u201cWe believe that Angel is on track to rewrite the rules of the media business and have a significant impact on culture.\u201d
Today\u2019s movie business is a $280-billion industry almost totally controlled by five major Hollywood studios. Studio executives decide what content to produce in boardrooms behind closed doors, with little to no input from consumers. As a result, almost 80% of the films that Hollywood thinks audiences want to see fail to break even every year, while real audiences rarely get the chance to enjoy the stories that matter most to them. Studios rely on a few major hits to maintain the status quo.
Angel Studios is a community-driven movie studio that empowers audiences to decide what content gets produced and distributed, while creating communities around each project. Creators pitch projects on the Angel platform, and \u201cAngel investors\u201d fund the ones they\u2019re most excited to see (via the Angel Funding Portal). Post-production, content is delivered directly to viewers and goes viral as fans share it with others.
\u201cOn Angel\u2019s community and streaming platform, artists answer to audiences, not to a Hollywood studio,\u201d said Angel Cofounder and CEO Neal Harmon, \u201cAs our creators invert Hollywood\u2019s abysmal 80 percent failure rate, audiences will win.\u201d
The Angel model has already produced three of the most successful crowdfunded shows of all time, including:
The Chosen, the #1 crowdfunded media project in history, viewed over 300 million times to date, with a special in theaters this Christmas.
Dry Bar Comedy, the #1 family-friendly stand-up comedy channel, currently on its eighth season with one billion views a year.
The Wingfeather Saga, the world\u2019s #1 crowdfunded animated kids show, currently in production.
With this latest funding round, Angel plans to continue improving its streaming platform, market to new audiences, and develop its content pipeline for 2022 and beyond.
\u201cThis raise gives us more than funding; it gives us key strategic partners,\u201d said Harmon. \u201cGigafund and Uncorrelated will help us realize our long-term mission of remaking the entertainment industry and freeing both creators and their fans to enjoy the content that they find most important.\u201d
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About About Angel Studios
Angel Studios is the home of stories that amplify light. The “Angel” community chooses which titles get funded, created, and distributed. Angel Studios allows creators and audiences to form passionate communities around their creative projects, making the story behind the story as important as the final project itself. The studios\u2019 first projects\u2014The Chosen and Dry Bar Comedy\u2014have earned billions of views around the world.
About Gigafund
Gigafund is a venture capital firm backing the world’s most ambitious and transformative entrepreneurs. Gigafund was founded by former Founders Fund partners Stephen Oskoui and Luke Nosek and has over $2B in assets under management. Gigafund\u2019s investments include SpaceX, Cover, Luminous Computing, the Boring Company, Veryable, Last Energy, and Sana Benefits. More information can be found at Gigafund.com.
About Uncorrelated Ventures
Uncorrelated Ventures was founded by Salil Deshpande with Bain\u2019s backing to focus on infrastructure software, both traditional and decentralized. Deshpande was on the Forbes Midas List of the 100 best-performing venture investors worldwide in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, and 9th on the 2021 Business Insider Seed 100 list of best all-time seed investors. Deshpande has invested in several successful marketplace models including Lending Club, Upgrade, Pipe, Lyte, AngelList India, and now Angel Studios. More at Uncorrelated.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Angel Studios, Streaming Platform Behind \u201cThe Chosen\u201d, Raises $47 Million Investment Led by Gigafund to Give Hollywood a Remake (Provo, UT\u2014January 5, 2021) Angel Studios, the streaming platform behind the most successful crowdfunded shows of all time, has raised $47 million to bring control of the entertainment industry back to consumers and creators. The round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[45,219,1],"tags":[308,285,623,307,568,624,625,622],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-movies","category-uncategorized","tag-christian-film","tag-christian-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-faith-film","tag-faith-based-films","tag-hollywood","tag-investment","tag-the-chosen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fdt8-ec","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wandertruenorth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Angel-logo-copper_4x.png?fit=1000%2C349&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandertruenorth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}