PE Firm Madison Dearborn Pays $100M For A Majority Stake In Cloud Video Company QuickPlay Media

Cloud video services company QuickPlay Media is announcing today that Chicago-based private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners will be paying about $100 million to take a majority stake in the company. With the deal, Madison Dearborn has essentially bought out QuickPlay Media’s previous investors, which include General Catalyst, Ventures West, J.L Albright, and Up Capital.

With the close of the deal, Madison Dearborn and QuickPlay employees will own pretty much the entire company, with a small number of minority shareholders retaining a stake, including Toronto-based Difference Capital. Prior to the sale, QuickPlay Media had raised a total of $43 million, CEO Wayne Purboo told me.

The deal goes beyond just creating liquidity for investors in the eight-year old company. Madison Dearborn has also committed to continue investing in QuickPlay Media’s growth, particularly as it looks to expand internationally. The Toronto-based company has built a cloud platform for distribution of video content online, as well as to mobile devices and connected TVs, that’s already being used by some major distributors in North America.

“We’re still growing at an accelerating clip, and we needed additional working capital to fuel that growth,” Purboo said.

It claims more than 300 different devices that its customers can publish to from the platform, and manages more than 1.5 million media assets from 3,000 different content providers. Clients include AT&T U-verse and Verizon in the U.S., as well as Bell and Rogers Communications in Canada. RIM and Samsung also count as customers.

Last Summer, QuickPlay acquired the network operations center assets of Qualcomm’s now-defunct FLO TV mobile video service, to help deploy live multiscreen TV services in the U.S. But while many operators here already have TV Everywhere services well underway, QuickPlay Media sees more of a greenfield opportunity for multiplatform video services overseas.

The company now has a total of 200 employees, with offices in Toronto and San Diego. But it’s got aggressive international expansion plans ahead, according to Purboo. That likely means a European headquarters and sales offices throughout the region. It’s already got one customer in Hong Kong and is also looking at Singapore as a potential headquarters for Asia/Pac.