Fresh Off Its Lawsuit, Triller Raises $310M
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Social video app Triller will receive up to $310 million from Global Emerging Markets (GEM).
The Los Angeles-based company has had a troubling few months, but the new raise comes as the company plans to go public by the end of the year. The $310 million investment will come in equity capital for 36 months after the company goes public. Triller will draw from the investment as it sees fit and will issue stock to GEM on each drawdown.
“Triller has been growing tremendously,” Triller CEO and Chairman Mahi de Silva said in a statement. “At our inception in 2019, we were a zero-revenue company; now we are on track to break $100 million in revenue this year.”
The new funds will go towards making acquisitions and rounding out Triller’s offerings for creators. Triller currently owns streaming platform Verzuz, sports brand Triller Fight Club and streaming service FITE.tv.
The cash infusion comes on the tail of an agreement between Triller and TikTok to drop their warring patent lawsuits. Last week, the company settled a $28 lawsuit from Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, who claimed that Triller missed payments while in the process of buying Verzuz.
Still, even that wasn’t the first time the company failed to hand out cash. Universal Music Group removed its artists from the app after Triller did not pay the musicians before they finally reached an agreement. Sony is also suing Triller for copyright infringement after—again—missing payments.
Outside the legal landscape, a number of Triller’s Black creators claim that the company did not follow through on promised payments. Triller offered 300 Black creators $4,000 per month to post on the app, but many claim they received either less than the agreed amount or nothing at all. Triller refutes these allegations and maintains that it fulfilled its financial commitments.
As if all this weren’t enough, Triller is also facing the fact that TikTok, their primary competitor, has come to dominate the short-form video space: TikTok has one billion users compared with Triller’s 65 million.
Having already abandoned a planned reverse merger in favor of direct listing, the new funding may help Triller make up for its $700 million in losses last year—and it could help them pay some people they owe money to.
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Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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