Sequoia Capitals pours $100M into indie streaming service Mubi: what’s up?

Sequoia Capital, an American venture capital firm, invests a lot, and often. But a $100 million investment into Mubi, an indie film platform, is its first major foray into a European streaming company. That’s highly unusual.

Such a large investment now values Mubi, the art house streaming service and film distributor, at $1 billion, making it a unicorn. Not bad for a niche platform focusing on artsy and highbrow content, indeed.

It’s certainly a surprising move and an unusual pivot for Sequoia, a firm that usually invests in startups in the energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile industries. Why is the VC giant now betting on the demand for art house cinema?

Curating, distributing, producing

Well, for starters, the global demand for such content is actually growing worldwide. It turns out millions want to see films overlooked by larger distributors and giants like Netflix which seem to only care about eyeballs and, in the case of Netflix, what their precious algorithm tells them is cool to show.

Mubi already employs 400 workers in 15 counties and has recently expanded its presence in Latin America and Italy, launching localized content and partnerships with local talent.

This year, the streamer also plans to release high-profile films such as its first $20 million original production The Mastermind by director Kelly Reichardt, La Grazia by Paolo Sorrentino, and Father, Mother, Sister, Brother by Jim Jarmusch.

Launched back in 2007 by Efe Cakarel, a Turkish entrepreneur frustrated with the lack of online access to elite international cinema, Mubi now seems to be moving beyond simply curating and distributing production – which is what The Criterion Channel is successfully doing.

The ambition is now to grow as a full-fledged studio and rival established indie powerhouses such as A24 or Neon.

Mubi already boasts around 20 million registered users globally, and even though it’s unclear how many actually pay a monthly fee for full access, a financial injection by Sequoia massively helps future planning.

Hurray to human curation

What also sets Mubi apart is the fact that it’s not only streaming but also distributing films in a traditional way – they’re released in cinemas across the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, Germany, Latin American countries, and Italy.

The ambition is now to grow as a full-fledged studio and rival established indie powerhouses such as A24 or Neon.

Again, this is yet another piece of proof that Mubi’s not just a boutique streamer, and at least Sequoia Capital partner Andrew Reed is happy. He told Financial Times that Mubi is “high growth and profitable.”

Amidst general “enshittification” of video content platforms, it’s indeed hard to find a market in traditional ways. But quality indie content persistently remains in demand.

This year alone, seven of the Best Picture Oscar nominees were independent films, including Anora, The Brutalist, and The Substance, acquired and released by Mubi. It has grossed $84 million globally.

Perhaps most importantly, content on Mubi isn’t dependent on any data-driven algorithms – it’s curated by human professionals.

As journalist Kyle Chayka pointed out in his brilliant 2024 book “Filterworld,” the world has been losing its ability to curate our consumption and is ever more dependent on all-powerful algorithms which create “a pervasive sense of sameness.”

And if Mubi is a way out of this prison of blandness and toothless docility where human gatekeepers aren’t embraced anymore – best of luck to them, indeed.