Cisco leads $15.5 million investment in IPTV start-up, Akimbo

Updated

Cisco Systems, perceived by some as a faceless, somewhat boring Internet router company, wants to get more personal.

There’s nothing it would rather do than enter your living room, plop itself down on your couch, and entice you use its Internet video set-top box and other goodies it is pushing.

With growth in its core market slowing, Cisco is placing its hopes in video. If you and millions of others people start watching Internet video from your home, that’ll boost Cisco’s sales of its routers and video sales — and soon could bring millions, if not billions of dollars, into Cisco’s coffers.

Tomorrow, it will announce the most recent of its investments in the area: It joins AT&T, Blueprint Ventures and existing investors in making a $15.5 million investment into Akimbo, a San Mateo start-up that delivers video to your home TV.

Cisco has spread its bets in video – also investing in CinemaNow and Moviebeam. But as long as one or two of them work out, things are moving in the right direction for Cisco. (Update: Here is our Mercury News story about this, in which we talk with Akimbo’s Joshua Goldman and the Cisco guys responsible for the charge).

PS. Commenter below remarks that I fail to mention Kleiner Perkins is an existing investor. Even I can mention Kleiner only so many times ;)