North Bridge Venture Partners and Matrix Partners join m8 Capital in $16million total investment

London, 16 June 2011. m8 Capital, the mobile-focused venture fund, announced today a $10million series D investment in Aylus Networks, the Westford, MA based enabler of video communication services over mobile networks. Joseph Kim, General Partner of m8 Capital, will be joining the Aylus Board of Directors.

m8 Capital is joined in this funding round by Aylus Networks’ existing investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. The total invested in this round is $16million.

As front-facing cameras continue to proliferate across smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, video calling is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years. However, current video calling is limited to proprietary networks and isolated "silos".

For video calling to become widespread and "mainstream", people must be able to make video calls the way they currently make voice calls, across any device and across any network.

Aylus Networks, founded in 2005 by industry pioneer Shamim Navqi, provides technology and platforms that enable video calling across networks and devices, and also allow rich media to be built into the call. The investment announced today will help fund further development of the product, and extend sales operations globally.

Aylus’ technology will serve both mobile carriers as well as OTT (Over The Top) service providers in harnessing true interoperability. For example, it would allow a video call to place between an iPad and an Android mobile phone, or a video call to be placed from a landline US carrier to an Asian mobile carrier network.

“We expect video calling to grow exponentially in the coming years, with adoption rates similar to those of SMS,” said Joseph Kim, General Partner of m8 Capital. “We’re thrilled to be supporting the Aylus team in bringing to market their vision of seamless video calling available to everyone, everywhere.”

“The dawn of video becoming the new voice is upon us,” said Mark Edwards, CEO Aylus Networks. “The emergence of powerful video-ready smartphones and tablets, high-speed mobile networks, and consumers becoming accustomed to video calling on the desktop establishes the ideal conditions for the mass adoption of mobile video calling. For video calling to be a mass-market phenomenon it needs to be offered as a seamless add-on option to a voice call. People should be able to add or drop video from a call, leave a video voicemail, and roam while on a video call, just as they do now with voice calling. In addition, video calling services should be interoperable with other video calling services on different device platforms, and between networks and communities of users. This requires the kind of market leading video infrastructure platform Aylus has built.”