BitTorrent Client Azureus Raises Funding; Goes Commercial; Developing HD Platform

I knew a bit about it for a week, but felt weird about posting it since they disclosed as much in a job posting with us…well, now Dave Winer has posted about it and I can write on it: Azureus, the most popular open-source BitTorrent client (a Java client), has gone commercial, similar to what has happened with the commercial company avatar of BitTorrent, and has raised a small amount of venture funding from BV Capital. I also understand that it is closing on another chunk of funding.
The open-source client was first launched in 2003, among the first front-end clients for BitTorrent…the new commercial company, based in Palo Alto, CA, is headed by CEO Gilles Bian Rosa, launched at OnHollywood in April. Founder and CTO Olivier Chalouhi is also part of the commercial company.
Azureus 3.0, which will launch this summer, is hoping to cuts deals with content providers—movie and music–and develop a content distribution service. The company has just started hiring its engineering and business team. A video demo of the new service is here.
It has been download about 121 million times and currently has about 1.1 million users connected at any one time. In an interview with Slyck in April, CEO Rosa said that the company wants to “aggregate people around hi-def, high quality rich media, because that’s what Azureus does best…We think of it as a platform.”

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