The popular news app News break Announces $ 115 million in new funds raised.
The press release claims that this round makes News Break “one of the first new unicorns of 2021,” but the startup declined to reveal its actual rating.
Founder and CEO Jeff Zheng When he founded the company in 2015, the goal was to differentiate themselves from other news aggregation apps by focusing on local news and “helping or empowering these local content creators.”
To be clear, in News Break you can find similar articles that you would see in other news apps (there is a whole section for coronavirus news, for example, and this morning you will see lots of headlines about yesterday’s violent takeover of the US Capitol), but you will also see plenty of stories specially highlighted based on your location.
“The technology is interwoven with all aspects of the business. It enables local publishers and local journalists to generate content more effectively and reach an online audience more effectively,” said Zheng. “We have AI tools that we can use to deliver all of these relevant articles. We have location profiles and what you are most interested in that we basically compare to the content.”
Credit: News break
Local focus can become increasingly valuable in the broader economic challenges facing the local news business – as Zheng put it, there is “strong user demand” for local news but “weak supply”. And the strategy seems to have paid off so far for News Break. The app reached the top position several times in the “News” category of Apple’s US App Store (currently in fourth place) and also in Google Play. The startup currently reaches 12 million active users per day.
Zheng said that while News Break already shares advertising revenue with publishers, he hopes the value it offers these publishers will only grow over time: “We want to give back to creators as much money as possible.”
When I suggested that publishers and journalists might be suspicious of relying too much on a third-party platform to reach their audience, Zheng argued that News Break’s incentives differed greatly from major internet and social media media. Differentiate platforms.
“We are local,” he said. “If local publishers have problems, if the newspapers decrease every year, sooner or later we will be out of business.”
And while we’ve established in the past that News Break has Chinese roots – Zheng previously ran Yahoo Labs in Beijing and also founded the CEO of Chinese news startup Yidian Zixun. The startup also has team members in Beijing and Shanghai – Zheng emphasized that this is a “US high-tech company based in Delaware and headquartered in Mountain View”. The majority of the workforce is located in the United States and focuses on the US market. The distinction could become important if News Break continues to grow in light of current attempts by the US government to ban Chinese companies.
News Break previously raised $ 36 million in funding. The new round was led by Francisco Partners, who has a place on the News Break Board. IDG Capital also took part.
In a statement, Francisco Partners Principal Alan Ni said:
The multi-year successes of News Break in the local news area were the first to draw our attention to them. We are inspired by their mission and extremely impressed with the work they have done to bring local news spreading into the 21st century through cutting edge machine learning and media literacy. We’re excited to partner with News Break’s talented leadership team, who continue to drive local news innovation while rapidly expanding their business beyond the news to neighboring local industries.