Elemental Touts 100-Plus Customers for Multiscreen Video

Elemental Technologies, a provider of encoding solutions for multiscreen content, announced it has won more than 100 customers -- including Comcast, ESPN, HBO and Avail-TVN -- since launching its professional product line last year.

In 2011, Elemental expects to have tripled its revenue year-over-year to approximately $10 million. Last year it had $3.3 million in sales, according to Forbes' 2011 list of "America's most promising companies." The company has 57 employees (and 12 open positions), nearly double its headcount from a year ago.

"We believe 2011 was a landmark year in the video space and Elemental looks forward to playing a fundamental role in helping our customers perfect the media experience in years to come," Elemental CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman said in a statement.

Other Elemental customers include ABC News, Big Ten Network, CBS Interactive, National Geographic, PBS and Oceanic Time Warner Cable in Hawaii.

On the international front, Elemental this year opened its first international office, in the United Kingdom, in the summer of 2011. European customers include TF1 Group and Eurosport in France, WRN Broadcast in England, QVC in Italy and VMMa in Belgium. In Latin America, the company signed Internet service provider Terra, which used Elemental's technology to deliver streaming video of the 2011 Pan American games.

Privately held Elemental has raised $16.6 million from Walt Disney Co.'s Steamboat Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital. The Portland, Ore.-based company was founded in 2006.

Unlike video-encoding systems that use purpose-built hardware, Elemental's products use off-the-shelf, programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) for compute-intensive video processing and conversion tasks.