It was with some latency that Ateme celebrated its 30th anniversary in July 2022 – one year late due to the health crisis. And what a party it was ! Employees from North and South America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe flocked to Paris for a cruise on the Seine with a view on the Eiffel Tower.
So what exactly were they celebrating? What is Ateme, and what has it achieved over the last 30 years? Here’s a quick overview of Ateme’s first 30 years.
Ateme’s founder, Michel Artières, has seen Ateme grow and develop from a small service company to become the world reference in video processing and delivery solutions – including solutions not only for encoding and transcoding, but also for packaging, origin, Cloud DVR, CDN, DAI, and analytics.
The beginnings
Founded in 1991, the company offered services to design video and signal processing systems for tier-one scientific, aeronautical and defense research centers. In ten years it grew from ten to 60 employees, in both France and Canada.
By 2001, Ateme was providing its software and codec technology to independent software vendors and OEMs specializing in video encoding and decoding. Some of its customers from those times are now its competitors. Ateme continued this business model until 2007.
Transforming to offer solutions
In fact, the early years of the millennium marked a major transformation for Ateme, which repositioned as a “product” company. No longer content selling white label software, it offered video encoding and decoding solutions integrated into servers.
By 2007, Ateme’s employees were based also in the USA and Japan. At the NAB Show in April of that year, Ateme launched its first-generation KYRION encoder for IPTV via ADSL and terrestrial broadcast. Two years later, again at the NAB Show, Ateme announced the launch of its TITAN transcoders dedicated to high-end video-on-demand services. By then its employees extended to Brazil and Korea.
Bold decisions, accelerated growth
In 2011, live transcoding was also possible on the TITAN range. Ateme took a bold decision and divested its thriving video surveillance business, to focus exclusively on the broadcast industry.
Growth accelerated and Ateme went public via Euronext Paris in 2014. The company had more than doubled, with 130 employees across three continents and seven countries; Singapore was the latest addition.
This continued growth enabled Ateme to shift to a monthly recurring revenue model. The transition – which is still ongoing – began in 2019.
End-to-end video processing & delivery – across all platforms
Then in 2020, Ateme acquired Anevia. This acquisition created the world leader in end-to-end video processing and delivery across all platforms – Ateme as we know it today. The company expanded and completed its product portfolio with packaging, Cloud DVR, CDN, DAI, and analytics solutions.
Today, Ateme is still expanding its international presence and continues its rapid growth with a headcount of more than 500 people. It is investing heavily in innovation, as attested by last year’s announcement of the Emmy Awards triple crown. Beyond that, Ateme is focusing on reducing the environmental impact of the video and streaming industry, and became a founding member of Greening of Streaming in 2021.
Thirty years have brought huge transformations to the video industry and to Ateme. From a service company to a provider of end-to-end solutions for processing and delivering video over any platform, with a mission to do that sustainably. From ten people to over 500. 30 years of transformation that we celebrated in style!