Popular app maker VSCO acquires video company Rylo

Photo-sharing subscription service VSCO announced the acquisition of Rylo, a maker of a compact camera with powerful video stabilization technology. Terms weren’t disclosed, but published reports say Rylo will abandon the hardware business to focus on the video tech. Rylo had raised roughly $38 million in VC funding, reaching a valuation of $120.25 million with a $20 million Series B announced in October 2018, according to data collected by PitchBook.

“In just the past year, we’ve seen video editing double on VSCO, and DSCO, our GIF creation tool, remains one of our most popular features,” writes Joel Flory, co-founder and COE. “It’s clear that our users want more video tools and new ways to tell their stories through creative self-expression. Though Rylo is most well-known for manufacturing compact cameras, over the past several months the Rylo team has been exclusively working on mobile video editing tools. Building high-end video editing capability on mobile is no small feat and we believe our combined technology and focus on video will help pave new innovation for video editing tools. We can’t wait to make these new tools available to the VSCO community next year.”

According to the announcement, co-founders, Alex Karpenko and Chris Cunningham. will make the move to VSCO. “The entire team brings deep experience in developing and shipping video technology at scale, including co-creating Instagram’s timelapse and direct messaging features and iPhoto for iOS,” adds Flory.

Rylo was backed by a number of institutional investors, including Sequoia Capital,  Alumni Ventures Group, Icon Ventures  and Accel — a Silicon Valley venture capital fund and key stakeholder in Oakland-based VSCO, according to Techcrunch.