Subscription streaming service CuriosityStream said it has secured another $140 million in funding to help it expand its nonfiction programming strategy.
The new investment, from Blum Capital Ventures and TimesSquare Capital Management, will be used to increase spending on factual programming, advance content discovery on the platform, and market CuriosityStream globally.
"This is an important step in a significant effort to connect CuriosityStream with viewers around the world," said Clint Stinchcomb, president and CEO of CuriosityStream, in a statement. "Hundreds of millions of people globally are migrating to on demand television and entertainment. We are in the middle of a seismic shift in consumer behavior, and this funding will accelerate the dynamic growth we achieved in the last 12 months."
CuriosityStream said it ended 2018 with 1 million paid subscriptions and more than 2,000 titles in its content library. The service wouldn’t speculate on how many subscriptions it might have by the end of 2019, but it said it wants to expand its library to more than 3,000 titles and also offer more 4K content.
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Last year, Stinchcomb told FierceVideo that CuriosityStream sees an opportunity in programming that travels well.
“We’re cognizant of creating certain programming that has appeal to particular markets, but so much of what we do has global appeal. There’s a lot of opening right for what you might call enlightening entertainment, because everybody has just gone so far down market. Everyone has gone so far chasing lowest-common-denominator reality programming,” Stinchcomb said.
CuriosityStream offers programming focused on science, nature, history, technology, society, and lifestyle. In addition to being available as a standalone app on several platforms, CuriosityStream is integrated with TV services and video aggregators including Amazon Prime Video Channels, YouTube TV, Sling TV, Dish, VRV, Comcast Xfinity on Demand, Cox and Layer3 TV.
CuriosityStream costs $2.99 per month for the Standard (HD) service and $9.99 per month for the Premium (4K) service. Standard and Premium service are also available for annual fees of $19.99 and $69.99, respectively.