Elemental was an American software company based in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, and active from 2006 to 2015. It was founded by three engineers formerly of the

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

company Pixel works: Sam Blackman (

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

), Jesse Rosenzweig ( CTO), and Brian Lewis. In 2015, it was acquired by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

History

In July 2012, Elemental products supported the broadcast of the

2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012, were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

on internet devices for media companies including the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, Euro sport,

Terra Networks Terra was a Spanish Internet multinational company owned by Telefónica. It was headquartered in Spain and had offices in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and Peru. Part of the Telefónica Group (the former Spanish public tele ...

, and others. In September 2013, Elemental was named to the Silicon Forest top 25 by ''

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Tho ...

''. The company ranked #24 among the region's largest technology companies. In October 2013, Elemental provided live 4K

HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In co ...

video streaming of the 2013 Osaka Marathon in a workflow designed by K-Opticom, a telecommunications operator in Japan. In April 2017, the company changed its name from Elemental Technologies to AWS Elemental.

Feared security compromise

In 2015, during security testing conducted as a prelude to a possible acquisition by

, it was reported that some Elemental servers contained chips from Chinese manufacturing subcontractors that allowed backdoor access. According to a U.S. government investigation, the chips were inserted by a People’s Liberation Army unit. These reports were denied by all of the companies involved, no such chips were ever found, and the acquisition proceeded without further incident.

Funding

Elemental received its initial investments in 2007 in the amount of $1.05 million from three

angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

funds: the Seattle-based Alliance of Angels, the Oregon Angel Fund, and the Bend Venture Conference. In July 2008, Elemental announced it had closed its first round of

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

financing, receiving $7.1 million, which included investments from General Catalyst Partners of

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and Voyager Capital of

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

. In 2009, Elemental formed a partnership with In-Q-Tel the

arm of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. Elemental servers were subsequently used in various secure capacities, including by the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

, the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

and the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

. In July 2010, Elemental raised an additional $7.5 million in Series B financing. Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

, joined existing venture funds General Catalyst and Voyager Capital in the financing round. In May 2012, Elemental closed its Series C financing for $13 million from

Norwest Venture Partners Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, ...

. In December 2014, Elemental closed its Series D financing for $14.5 million led by

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets related products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 stock index, and is Australia's largest telecomm ...

and

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

. In September 2015, Elemental was acquired by

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

, for an estimated $350 million.

Products

AWS Media Services

In November 2017, Amazon Web Services announced AWS Media Services, a group of five services that are intended for video providers to generate video offerings in the cloud, with the ability to scale. AWS Media Services include the following individual services: AWS Elemental MediaConvert transcodes file-based video content. AWS Elemental MediaLive encodes live video for televisions or connected devices. AWS Elemental MediaPackage prepares and secures live video streams for delivery to connected devices. AWS Elemental MediaStore delivers video from media-optimized storage. AWS Elemental MediaTailor inserts targeted advertising into streaming video. AWS Elemental MediaConnect transport stream based video contribution and distribution.

Elemental Live

In April 2010, Elemental introduced its enterprise product, Elemental Live, a video processing system that provides video and audio encoding for live streaming to media platforms. Elemental Live made its debut at NAB in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 12–15, 2010, with a four-screen demonstration featuring simultaneous real-time encoding of multiple video streams targeted to mobile, tablet, web and HDTV platforms.

Elemental Server

In November 2009, Elemental released the first video server appliance to utilize the graphics processing unit for video on demand (VOD) transcoding. The company claims its performance equals that of seven dual quad-core CPU servers. Other potential benefits include conversion speed, reduced power usage, less physical space, and overall cost, which is reported to be less than half of a CPU server. Elemental Servers reportedly sold for as much as $100,000 per machine, with a

profit margin Profit margin is a financial ratio that measures the percentage of profit earned by a company in relation to its revenue. Expressed as a percentage, it indicates how much profit the company makes for every dollar of revenue generated. Profit margi ...

of up to 70%.

Elemental Delta

Elemental Delta is a video delivery platform designed to optimize the monetization, management and distribution of multiscreen video across internal and external IP networks. Elemental Delta has been presented at IBC in September 2014 and won the IABM Design and Innovation award for Playout and Delivery Systems.

Elemental Cloud

Elemental Cloud provides transcoding services in a

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

environment using clustered graphics processors.

Elemental Statmux

Elemental Statmux is a software-based statistical multiplexer that optimizes content delivery for pay TV operators by reallocating bits in real time between video encoders and combining the outputs from multiple encoders into a single transport stream.

Elemental Conductor

Elemental Conductor is a scalable management system of two or more Elemental video processing systems.

Badaboom

On October 23, 2008, Elemental released Badaboom, a consumer media converter, in partnership with NVIDIA Corporation. Badaboom uses Elemental's video engine to transcode video files from several formats, including

MPEG2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods ...

, H.264,

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV (video format), DV videocassette Videotape, tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional vi ...

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around cam ...

, and RAW, into the H.264 format for devices such as the

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

, and Sony PSP. Elemental Technologies announced Badaboom 2.0 is the final version and stopped producing the product. The company supported Badaboom until April, 2013, without further software updates.

Awards

*2023 NAB Best of Show – Streaming solutions for MediaConnect Gateway *2017 NAB Best of Show – Recognized for 4K video processing by NewBay Media *2016 EY Entrepreneur of the Year – Sam Blackman was named the winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 award in the Pacific Northwest region in the technology category *2015 TVB Awards – Winner in the Multiplatform Production and Delivery category *2014 IABM Design and Innovation—Best Playout and Delivery System *2013 Cable & Satellite International (CSI)—-Best in Digital Video Processing, Elemental Technologies *2013 ConnectedWorld.TV Awards—Best Delivery Technology, Elemental Technologies *2013 Portland Business Journal 100 Fastest Growing Companies—No. 6, Elemental Technologies *2013 Oregon Technology Awards—Technology Growth Company of the Year, Elemental Technologies *2012 Forbes America's 100 Most Promising Companies—No. 23, Elemental Technologies *2012

Inc. (magazine) ''Inc.'' is an American business media company founded in 1979 and based in New York City. ''Inc.'' publishes several print magazine issues per year, and is anchored by journalistic content online and on social media, focused on entrepreneurship a ...

500, America's Fastest Growing Private Companies—No. 52, Elemental Technologies *2011 Forbes America's 100 Most Promising Companies—No. 54, Elemental Technologies *2011 Streaming Media Editors' Pick—Elemental Live *2010 TV Technology Mario Award—Elemental Live

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.elemental.com/ Software companies based in Oregon Companies based in Portland, Oregon Technology companies established in 2006 American companies established in 2006 2006 establishments in Oregon Amazon (company) 2015 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States