Roku

Roku, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates a TV streaming platform. The company operates in two segments, Platform and Player. Its platform allows users to discover and access various movies and TV episodes, as well as live TV, news sports, shows, and others. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 60.1 million active accounts. It also provides digital and video advertising, content distribution, subscription, and billing services, as well as other commerce transactions, and brand sponsorship and promotions; and manufactures, sells, and licenses smart TVs under the Roku TV name. In addition, the company offers streaming players, and audio products and accessories under the Roku brand name; and sells branded channel buttons on remote controls of streaming devices. It provides its products and services through retailers and distributors, as well as directly to customers through its website in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, North and South Americas, and Europe. Roku, Inc. was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Roku was founded in October 2002 as a limited liability company , by ReplayTV founder Anthony Wood. Roku means "six" in the Japanese language, to represent the fact that Roku is the sixth company Wood started.In April 2007 Wood was named a vice president of Netflix.

After Netflix decided to not build its own player, a new Roku company was incorporated in February 2008, based in Palo Alto, California, with Netflix as an investor of $6 million, to build a player.

Later in 2008 company headquarters moved to Saratoga, California, further south in Silicon Valley.

A round of venture capital funding from Menlo Ventures was announced in October 2008.

Another round of about $8.4 million was disclosed in 2009.

In 2015, the company announced it would be sub-leasing the buildings in Los Gatos, California from Netflix.On September 28, 2017, the company held an initial public offering of stock and began trading on the Nasdaq exchange.In 2017, Roku launched its self-serving advertising product to allow advertisers to serve ads to Roku's users. These include video ads, interactive video ads, audience development promotions and brand sponsorships. This was made possible through Roku allowing advertisers to transition from standard cable TV advertising to Roku's streaming platform. In 2016, Roku partnered with Magna, a media firm that specializes advertising, in order to incorporate targeted advertising on its streaming platform. In order to measure the success of its advertising efforts success, Roku partnered with Nielsen, a company that specializes in advertising effectiveness. In November 2019, Roku announced its acquisition of dataxu video advertising platform, for $150 million in cash and stocks. Roku shares rose more than two percent subsequent to the announcement.In July 2019 Roku started moving to a new headquarters in San Jose, with plans to vacate offices subleased from Netflix.On January 8, 2021, Roku announced it would acquire rights to Quibi's content, for an amount less than $100 million, and that all of Quibi's 75 programs would be available on their streaming platform, The Roku Channel.On March 19, 2021, TZP Growth Partners completed the sale of This Old House Ventures to Roku. All 1,500 episodes of Ask This Old House and This Old House will be made available to owners of Roku streaming products free with ads and through their dedicated 24/7 Streaming TV channel. PBS will still have rights to air episodes on their platforms.

Roku pioneered streaming for the TV, and we aspire to power every TV in the world. We developed a streaming platform that delivers a best-in-class user experience. At the heart of the Roku platform is our proprietary operating system, the Roku OS, which we built from the ground up. We believe that all television will be streamed, and that all TVs and set-top-boxes will be powered by software-based operating systems that provide a dramatically better user experience than has existed historically for the TV.