Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa
Short-form video-sharing app (and TikTok competitor) Triller has officially announced the close of a “substantial” funding round as it prepares to list on NASDAQ in “early Q4.”
Triller – which made headlines this month after facing a lawsuit from Verzuz co-founders Timbaland and Swizz Beatz – unveiled these and other developments via a formal release today. On the funding front, the company didn’t disclose the precise sum that it had pulled down, but indicated that the capital influx had resulted from debt as well as equity.
Participants in the “pre-public financing” include Total Formation Co (an affiliate of Taipei-based Taiwan Mobile owner Fubon Financial), Falcon Capital, and Clearvue Partners, Triller said.
On the IPO side, execs reiterated that Triller is expected to list on NASDAQ directly – a planned special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger previously fell through – under the ticker “ILLR” towards the beginning of Q4 2022 so long as “the capital markets continue to be stable.”
“This was an important step for Triller to be properly funded entering the Public Markets,” elaborated Triller chairman and CEO Mahi de Silva. “We are very pleased to have such strong market leaders as investors and look forward to bringing Triller to the world via a Nasdaq listing. If the capital markets continue to be stable, we are targeting an early Q4 public listing.”
Triller also took the opportunity to reveal that it had formally closed the purchase of Bare Knuckle Fight Championship (BKFC).
Having announced the acquisition earlier in 2022, the Amplify.ai and FITE.TV owner Triller relayed in today’s release that BKFC boasts “an anticipated 200,000 subscribers.” And as Triller has promoted hybrid combat-sports and music events in the past, it’ll be worth following its plans for the subsidiary moving forward.
(In related but decidedly discouraging news, Virginia Beach Police this afternoon declared BKFC interim bantamweight champion Reggie Barnett Jr. a “missing/endangered person” and said that the individual had last been in contact with his family yesterday.)
With its positioning at the intersection of music, social media, and crowd-based events, Triller could well be poised to achieve material success and growth should the U.S. government finally decide to ban ByteDance-owned TikTok, which has faced ample user-privacy criticism over the years.
As it stands, though, Triller now bills itself as an “AI-powered open garden technology platform for creators.” To date, said technology platform has raised north of $300 million, per higher-ups, who likewise maintain that their company has “over 300 million users across all of its platforms.”