Verizon Acquires Jason Kilar’s Vessel

NEW YORK: Verizon Communications has signed an agreement to acquire Vessel, founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, and will use the technology for its own go90 platform.

Verizon plans to hire most of Vessel’s employees. Notably, Vessel CTO Richard Tom will become the CTO for Verizon’s digital entertainment efforts. Kilar, however, is not expected to remain with the company.

As part of the deal, Vessel, an online video subscription service that provided early access to content from popular YouTube stars, will be shut down on October 31.

Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

“When we examined and evaluated all that the Vessel team has executed to date and their technical strengths in areas of content discovery, recommendation, OTT subscription management and user experience management we were able to identify a number of ways this was a smart pairing,” said Chip Canter, the general manager of Verizon Entertainment. “With Richard Tom leading technology and operations and Lonn Lee heading up product, we have the upmost confidence in our ability together to rapidly execute and enhance our products.”

“We are incredibly excited to have the opportunity to help shape the future of video on a dramatically larger scale with Verizon,” said Tom, co-founder and CTO at Vessel. “We are grateful for their confidence in our technology, product and team as well as their commitment to the innovation ahead in online video.”