Berlin-Based Adtech Company Fyber Exits To RNTS Media For €150M

Another exit for a Berlin tech company, albeit not necessarily a home run.

Fyber, the adtech company formerly known as SponsorPay has been acquired by the publicly-listed European media company RNTS Media. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, except to say that it’s a mixture of cash and stock, though we’re hearing from sources that the price is €150 million (which also tallies with the $190 million amount now being reported by VentureBeat, and an advisory issued by Anoa Capital).

As a result of the acquisition — which can really be viewed as a merger of sorts, given the size of the respective companies — Fyber will become a subsidiary of RNTS Media and will continue to operate independently under its existing leadership team. Fyber co-founder and CEO Andreas Bodczek will become Managing Director and CEO of the RNTS Media Management Board, and Janis Zech, co-founder and CRO of Fyber, will also join the Management Board.

Originally called SponsorPay, the Berlin startup was co-founded by Team Europe, the German-styled company builder, back in 2009 to help free-to-play browser based games find a route to monetisation. However, following wider games industry trends, in 2011 it pivoted to focus entirely on mobile with a unified supply-side-platform to let mobile app developers manage all of their mobile ad revenue, serving approximately 150 million unique users per month. Fyber claims thousands of customers, name-checking Gree, Glu Mobile, Kongregate, and Pixelberry.

Our understanding is that Fyber had raised around €10 million in equity-based financing, plus some debt-financing, over the course of two or three rounds. Backers included Team Europe Ventures, Hasso Plattner Ventures, Kite Ventures, and Nokia Growth Partners, an independent venture fund sponsored by Nokia.