A company founded by two former Waterloo Engineering students has joined forces with a smaller startup in Israel to add video to its hugely popular chat platform.
Kik Interactive, which began as a mobile chat app at the University of Waterloo’s Velocity incubator in 2009, announced the addition of the 35-employee company, Rounds, in a press release today.
Livingston, who left Waterloo Engineering to start the company just shy of graduating, donated US $1 million in 2011 to help launch the Velocity Fund, which provides financial support to student startups.
Chris Best, the other co-founder and chief technology officer at Kik, earned a degree in systems design engineering at Waterloo.
Now a chat platform with apps for games, music videos, web browsing and other chat-based services, Waterloo-based Kik has more than 300 million registered users. Teaming up with Rounds gives it 165 employees.
Kik added video features developed by Rounds - including simultaneous video chat by up to 12 friends while they play games or watch videos together - to its platform last month.
'Natural evolution of chat'
“Video is the natural evolution of chat and an integral part of expression and hanging out in real life,” said Dany Fishel, co-founder and chief executive officer of Rounds.
In addition to establishing a product and engineering office in Tel Aviv by uniting with Rounds, Kik announced it has opened an office in Toronto based out of the MaRS Centre.
Considered one of Canada’s most valuable startups at an estimated $1 billion, Kik did not disclose financial details of its deal with Rounds.