Financial services firm City National Bank has bought Stanford StartX-backed royalties payment platform Exactuals having led its series B round last year.
Stanford University’s StartX Fund has exited Exactuals, the US-based operator of a payment platform for entertainment royalties, in an acquisition by financial services firm City National Bank.
Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Exactuals will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of City National – another of its venture capital investors – and co-founder Mike Hurst will remain CEO, having signed multi-year contracts alongside other executives.
Founded at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2011, Exactuals has created a software platform called PaymentHub that automatically manages complex entertainment industry payments such as residuals and royalties.
The company has also developed Rai, a tool that relies on artificial intelligence to help record labels and music publishers improve their calculation and payment of royalties.
The acquisition is expected to help Exactuals attract larger clients and tap into City National’s existing customers in the entertainment sector. It also plans on expanding into other industries in the long term.
Exactuals had raised $21.5m in total funding as of its last publicly disclosed round, a $10.6m series B in February 2017 that included City National, payroll services provider Entertainment Partners and venture capital firm TTV Capital.
City National had already co-led the company’s $10m series A round with TTV a week earlier, investing together with Stanford University’s StartX Fund.
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Corporate Venturing.
