Shantel
Today, Loupe announced the closing of a $3M Series Seed+ funding round led by ALIAVIA Ventures, followed by Sound Media Ventures, CityRock Venture Partners, Goal Ventures, Phoenix Capital Ventures, Yolo.io and Atlanta Technology Angels. This announcement signifies Loupe as the leader in streaming art, transforming offices, commercial real estate, billboards, and home entertainment, while supporting hundreds of living artists to earn a living.
Loupe leads the art streaming sector, transforming the way people view, experience, and acquire art. Loupe has millions of monthly users, and agreements with premiere streaming media companies in place. Loupe will utilize the funding to secure lead generation around branded content and consumer awareness, as well as the expansion of its streaming partnerships with major media and hospitality companies in 2023. Loupe is also developing generative art as a genre.
The Loupe platform is available on Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Comcast Xfinity, Google TV, LG Channels, Local Now, Samsung TV Plus, Sling TV, Xumo, ViX (TelevisaUnivision), and Vizio WatchFree+. The company continues to expand its out-of-home and branded partnerships, which it launched with Caesars Entertainment. Among its accolades, Loupe is the #1 Lifestyle App in 75 countries on Apple TV.
The Loupe for Business application launched recently as an affordable solution for out-of-home markets – from hospitality to healthcare – to schedule, manage and tailor branded art experiences by location zone, throughout the day and week. Through these new channels and other organic growth, Loupe expanded its reach to over 3 million monthly users in 2022.
“Loupe’s business model is unique in that the platform helps to promote undiscovered artists who sell both physical and digital art, while also extending that experience into the home, and any screen OOH (out of home) particularly in high traffic areas such as hospitality. Not since my days at Spotify have I seen such a disruptive streaming platform which has the ability to transform the industry. This combined with traction the team has achieved with Tier 1 brand partnerships demonstrates a real demand in market for Loupe. We are excited to be involved as Loupe scales the business globally,” said Vale, Co-Founder at ALIAVIA Ventures, and former executive at Google, Spotify and YouTube.
ALIAVIA Ventures invests in early-stage, female founders across the U.S. and Australia building world-changing enterprise and consumer tech companies. As part of the round, ALIAVIA Co-Founder Kate Vale joins Loupe’s board.
Core to Loupe’s mission is helping artists around the world sell their work via a connected marketplace to sell the streaming art. Loupe gives voice and exposure to more than 700 emerging and well-known artists. Users can select from over 50 customizable art-streaming channels featuring mood, cultural and seasonal themes, as well as the algorithmically driven Stream by Color playlists. Using patented software, the platform ingests digital assets and user-generated preferences to curate a distinctive experience of ambient entertainment, displaying all forms of contemporary art works from Fine Art Painting, Award-winning Photography and Street Art & Murals to Digital, NFT and Motion Art.
“Loupe’s screens are proliferating in buildings and businesses across the world to contribute an inspired workplace experience with cultural relevance that drives repeat business,” states Oliver Libby, co-founding Managing Partner of CityRock Venture Partners, “Loupe’s ability to quickly create curated channels, and to build branded, private, or segment-specific experiences is on point for the future of screens and the way people want to consume content. We are delighted to be on team Loupe.”
The content streaming industry is worth over $375 billion USD. Streaming has disrupted nearly every form of media with one exception: the art market. “Loupe’s ability to bring new revenues and new avenues for consumer connections into the content streaming industry is ground-breaking,” says Loupe Board Member Cameron Clayton, CEO of EasyPark and former CEO of The Weather Channel. “The last two years, they have gained significant momentum and hit technology and partnership milestones.”
Loupe Founder and CEO Dot Bustelo, formerly with Apple’s global product team, is an internationally recognized creative technologies and entertainment software strategist. “There has been a cultural inflection point worldwide on the value of digital art experiences. We are thrilled to make this both affordable and customizable by industry verticals spanning in-home, hospitality and the workplace, while giving emerging and established artists access to a global customer base to sell their work,” Bustelo explains. “The Loupe team has completed a foundational year of expanding our technology to support a global community of artists and international streaming distribution for digital art. This year is about scale and growth.”
ABOUT LOUPE:
Loupe is the pioneering leader of global art streaming services. With over 700 artists, 50+ channels and over a dozen streaming relationships including Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Comcast Xfinity, Google TV, LG Channels, Local Now, Samsung TV Plus, Sling TV, Xumo, ViX (TelevisaUnivision), FreeCast and Vizio WatchFree+, Loupe is poised to exceed its 3M viewers/month statistics in 2022. Its recent technological expansions and major patent awards garnered $3M in Seed Plus investment in 2022, enabling the content aggregator and visual experience platform to launch Loupe for Business, which enables companies like Caesars Entertainment to schedule, manage and tailor a branded art experience by zone within a location throughout the day and week. Info.loupeart.com
