Firework Raises $150 Million in Series B Funding Round led by Softbank

Today we announced a significant step forward for Firework: one that will allow us to fully embrace our vision to humanize commerce and engagement across the open web through the language of video.Led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, Firework has closed out a $150 million Series B funding round.In practical terms, that means that we’re going to be able to enhance our already stellar engineering, product, and marketing teams, bringing on critical new talent to explore new areas to innovate and drive progress.But in broader terms, it means we can accelerate our mission to fundamentally reshape the nature of engagement on the open web, giving companies the power to engage with customers on their own sites, on their own terms, and with control over their own data.

For myself and co-founder Jerry Luk, this is an incredible moment—and it represents an inflection point for Firework. We have been rapidly building Firework into the global company it is today; a 300-person strong business operating in 20 countries with over 90 engineers and data scientists. We have been rapidly evolving our product over the last year and added over 20 patent-pending features to an already stellar platform.

In terms of partnerships, we are capping off a string of huge wins with leading brands and organizations including Kraft Heinz, Omnicom Media Group, The Albertsons Companies, Shopify, Stripe, Mattel, Unilever, Fresh Market, and American Express.We are growing exponentially, and still, we are in the early days of live commerce adoption.The short-form video and live-shopping wave are just beginning to lap America’s shores. A live-commerce market that generated over $300 billion in China last year, making up almost a fifth of all retail e-commerce sales, holds immense promise here—where short-form video has quickly become the de-facto form of engagement among younger audiences.The brands that are ready to take the leap into short-form, live, shoppable, swipeable, anywhere-on-the-open-web video are going to be the ones riding the crest of that wave and speaking to digital natives in their native tongue.We can’t wait to empower them to take charge.

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The Wall Street Journal covered our news today, which I’m linking below. Big thanks to WSJ’s Ann-Marie Alcántara for diving into our story and talking with us, our customers, and Softbank’s own Linda Yu, who we are so excited to welcome to our board of directors.Check out the coverage here.