Jezby Ventures takes over Blade and its cloud PC service Shadow

Shadow Cloud Gaming 3 Devices (Image credit: Shadow)

What you need to know

Cloud gaming company Blade filed for bankruptcy in March.
It has now been acquired by Octave Klaba's investment fund Jezby Ventures.
The acquisition, by extension, gives Klaba ownership of Shadow.

After going through its bankruptcy filing in early March, Blade, the French startup, now has new ownership. Via his investment fund Jezby Ventures, Octave Klaba has acquired the company and its services.

Klaba took to Twitter to announce his new ownership of Blade, giving a big shoutout to the Paris Commercial Court in the process (via Yahoo).

Très heureux d’avoir été retenu par le Tribunal de Commerce de Paris pour le 1UP de @Shadow_France !

L’ambition est simple : bâtir la meilleure offre du Cloud Gaming au Monde ! On a désormais tout dans 1 seule boite: équipe talentieuse, aucun souci de CAPEX, le marché mondial ! pic.twitter.com/Yz3RlV02dyTrès heureux d’avoir été retenu par le Tribunal de Commerce de Paris pour le 1UP de @Shadow_France !

L’ambition est simple : bâtir la meilleure offre du Cloud Gaming au Monde ! On a désormais tout dans 1 seule boite: équipe talentieuse, aucun souci de CAPEX, le marché mondial ! pic.twitter.com/Yz3RlV02dy— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) April 30, 2021 April 30, 2021

This means that Klaba now controls Shadow, the cloud PC service provided by Blade. Shadow's whole premise was that you'd pay to rent a PC in its data center and stream its activities to your devices. So if you wanted a turbo-charged gaming rig to stream its output directly to your phone, or tablet, or weaker PC, that's when Shadow's proposition would be useful.

It remains to be seen what Klaba's intentions are for Blade and Shadow. Everything ranging from Shadow's current pricing scheme to its overall business model could be revamped, so it's anyone's guess as to whether the cloud service will resemble its former self under the new ownership. Perhaps the new money will be what Blade needs for Shadow to succeed since funding and server capacity were reportedly among the woes that brought about the need to file for bankruptcy in the first place.

Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He's a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author of Cold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.

1 Comment

"Perhaps the new money will be what Blade needs for Shadow to succeed since funding and server capacity were reportedly among the woes that brought about the need to file for bankruptcy in the first place." Unlikely. Its just another one in a whole series of companies going BK in game streaming. The need to file for BK is based lack of demand, and unable to provide a service which is viable enough to sustain itself. More money just possibly extends the time period to the next BK or abandonment i.e. throwing money into a furnace. I would say, you would think someone would figure out this is a horrible business. What makes sense in enterprise as far as VDs doesn't make sense for consumers in gaming for obvious reasons. Heck, I was in the OnLive beta back a decade ago, it (game streaming or renting a desktop for gaming) simply doesn't make sense.