Barcelona-based smart TV operating system maker Titan OS has raised $46 million in new funding, consisting of both equity and debt, the company announced on Wednesday.
The money comes from debt facilities provided by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, along with existing investors like Highland Europe and Mangrove Capital Partners. The startup, which secured $58 million last year, has now raised $110 million in total. The company said that it could have chosen not to raise money and grow slowly, but it wants to be more ambitious to create more partnerships and expand into more geographies.
Titan OS’s promise to TV makers is that it offers better value from their unit sales by loading an operating system where they can generate money through partnerships with FAST channels (free ad-supported television) and ads on different screens.
The company now serves 30 million users, up from 18 million last year. This includes being a sales partner for TiVo in some regions, along with Tubi in the UK.
Compared with last year, the startup has also added Sharp, AOC, Vestel, and Skyworth as partners. Its partnership with Philips has been a success, as the Dutch electronics maker has switched to Titan OS and ditched Google TV for its 2026 models.
The extended coverage means that it has a bigger advertiser footprint and better audience engagement metrics to offer to marketers.
“Our bread and butter is the monetization of our inventory on our own network. But the point is that we’re going beyond that. That’s why our reach has increased significantly, which then triggers the flywheel effect by also attracting more sales partners and more agencies that want to spend on our platform, whether it’s owned and operated ord CFO, told TechCrunch over a call
In the last year, the company has increased its headcount to 250 people, and also opened an office in London to concentrate on advertising. It already has offices in Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Taipei.
With the new money coming in, the company wants to focus on a few areas. First is content discovery. It still takes everyone a long time to find something to watch. For that, it is using interface tweaks and AI to boost discovery, alongside partnering with more content providers like FAST channels.
“What differentiates us here from the walled gardens is that we do not have our own content offering. Like Google is trying to channel people to YouTube. We do not have that, and we are impartial in our role in content discovery. We are working and trying to reduce time spent searching,” Tobias Pfalzgraff, SVP of people and marketing at Titan OS, said.
Pfalzgraff also emphasized that the company is using AI to improve its ad recommendation and segmentation. While the company is dominant in Europe, it thinks that there are only a few manufacturers creating their own operating systems; more set makers would like to adopt its operating system, just like Philips did. The company also said that with increasing costs of hardware due to AI, manufacturers are thinking about long-term revenue generation opportunities as gadget sales slow down.
“The TV hardware industry is not a very profitable business. That’s why they are so reliant on partners like Titanos that share revenue after the sale of the TV. But now, of course, the chip sets, the chip prices are increasing more and more. Right. With the AI boom, they have basically doubled down on our partnership,” Kim said.
Source: techcrunch.com
