Giphy Raises $72 Million in Funding, Launches Vine Importer
GIF search engine and hosting site Giphy has raised a new $72 million round in funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners, China Media Capital and others. The new funding round brings the total amount of money raised by Giphy to $151 million.
The new cash infusion comes just days after Giphy positioned itself as a potential savior for Vine creators and their videos: Following Twitter’s announcement that it is going to shut down Vine, Giphy announced last week that it is now offering an import tool to turn any Vine video into a looping GIF file.
“The Vine community fostered a truly special kind of humor and innovation; Giphy wants to provide a place for that creativity to live on,” the company said on its website. Converted files will be served without audio, but creators will still be able to download the original source file from Giphy at any time.
Giphy started in 2013 as a search engine for GIF files, and later added hosting capabilities as well. The company claims that serves more than 1 billion GIF files every day, which are being viewed by more than 100 million daily users.
Giphy has yet to add advertising to its service. The company has been working with brands and media partners including NBC, Fox and Apple as part of its Giphy Studios content creation efforts.
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