Roku, Inc. ( ) is an American public company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 2002, Roku manufactures and sells streaming devices, smart TVs, speakers and smart home products. It also licenses its proprietary operating system to other manufacturers, offers channel subscriptions and serves targeted ads to viewers on its streaming platform, and operates an ad-supported streaming channel.
History
Roku was founded in October 2002 as a limited liability company (LLC), by ReplayTV founder Anthony Wood. Roku (六) 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 April 2022, the company was said to be launching a new ad program to allow advertisers to serve "targeted ads in real time". Roku also sells channel subscription on its platform, and receives a cut of the subscription sales.
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.
Legacy products
Roku's consumer products included: PhotoBridge HD1000, a system for displaying images on a high-definition television, as well as streaming MPEG video. The unit has four card readers on the front and can read from a CompactFlash Card type II, Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, SD Memory Card, or SmartMedia Card Roku SoundBridge, a network music player SoundBridge Radio, a network music player with built-in speakers and subwoofer, AM‑FM receiver, volume-ramping alarm clock, preset buttons, SD slot, and headphone jack
For retailers, Roku also produced: BrightSign solid-state media player, designed to drive HD displays in a retail environment.
Roku's audio products did not use internal storage but relied on Wi-Fi or Ethernet to stream digital audio over a network, either from Internet radio or a computer attached to the same network. Roku introduced the Radio Roku Internet radio directory in August 2007; Radio Roku provides a directory of Internet stations, accessible from a web browser or from SoundBridge players.
Roku streaming players
Roku produces numerous set-top boxes for delivery of over-the-top content. Content is provided by Roku partners, identified using the "channel" vernacular. Each separate channel supports content from one partner, although some content partners have more than one channel. In May 2011, Roku stated the Streaming Players had over one million viewers and had delivered 15 million channel downloads.