Muzy Announces $4.4 Million Round of Funding

Muzy, Inc., an early-stage microblogging service focused on mobile content creation, today announced a $4.4 million round of investment funding. The startup has attracted more than 20 million users globally and is adding more than one million new users each month. Investors include WPP

, the world's largest communications services group; DOCOMO Capital, the Silicon Valley venture arm of NTT DOCOMO, Inc.

, the leading mobile communication company based in Japan; Recruit Strategic Partners, the Corporate Venture Capital of Recruit Holdings, the Japanese Internet company; and Chinese internet entrepreneurs Xuyang Ren, former VP of Corporate Development for Baidu, and Jianfeng Lu, former CTO of Qihoo 360. Headquartered in San Francisco, Muzy was launched in 2011 by its cofounders, CEO Andrew Chen and CTO Matt Rubens. Muzy will use the new investment to further scale the engineering team and build out the suite of creative publishing tools for the Muzy platform. Muzy currently offers more than 50 mobile publishing tools and a global network for sharing content, and Muzy is a "Top 100" photo app in 70+ countries. "This investment allows us to build stronger distribution in Asia, with our new partners in Japan and China," said CEO Andrew Chen. "We also look forward to partnering with WPP and its significant clients to develop our advertising model."