AMSTERDAM—Hedge, a developer of intelligent software solutions for video professionals, has announced it has closed a $3M round of seed funding led by Steve Bayes in participation with other private media industry investors.
Hedge will use the investment to grow its team, and expand its media technology portfolio and capabilities through the acquisition of Divergent Media assets and an investment in Colourlab, the company said.
The company, which was founded in 2016, has also appointed three strategic advisor appointments to help take the company through its next stage of growth: investor Steve Bayes, industry executive Estelle McGechie, and filmmaker Robin Moran.
“Hedge has had five consecutive years of profitable growth. But, even with our success and rapid development schedule, there’s still so much more we can build to make life even better for our customers,” explained Paul Matthijs, co-founder and CEO of Hedge. “With this investment coming from industry leaders who understand the pain points we are trying to solve, we will grow our team and focus on optimizing the workflow for customers rather than finances, bringing new features and entirely new products to market faster. And by investing back into the industry, we are also building a new era of video workflows that are open, reliable, and fast - and that will catapult video production into the modern age.”
Hedge’s software transfers valuable video content from cameras to multiple storage media, and allows video editors to collaborate across the cloud.
The acquisition of the Divergent Media tools will help with DIT, editing, finishing and transcoding in ways that will provide users with “a more complete and friction free workflow with experts they can tap into,” Matthijs said.
Hedge is also the lead investor in Colourlab’s seed round, which was completed earlier this year. It’s AI-driven color grading technology enables users to match the color essence of a film clip and accurately apply it to a single clip or hundreds, automatically.
Hedge’s investment into the color-focused technology company will help further commoditize workflows and fits into Hedge’s overriding ethos of offering users products that promote efficiency and time-savings, Matthijs said.
