Kontiki, a provider of Grid delivery solutions for high quality video, software and digital content, announced the closing of an $8.6 million investment. MK Capital led the investment round and was joined by previous investors including Adobe Ventures, Barksdale Group, and Benchmark Capital.

Kontiki also announced that Mark Koulogeorge, managing general partner at MK Capital, and Mark Terbeek, partner at MK Capital, will join Kontiki's board of directors. Other outside board members include Intuit chairman Bill Campbell, Peter Currie of The Barksdale Group, Standish O'Grady of Granite Ventures, and Mike Homer, co-founder and chairman of Kontiki.

"When making the decision to invest in Kontiki, we were especially impressed with the strong endorsements and enthusiasm of Kontiki's enterprise customers," said Mark Koulogeorge of MK Capital. "They each validated Kontiki's strong value proposition of reducing the costs of digital content delivery while extending its reach to corporate employees and Internet users. The customers also viewed Kontiki's Grid delivery as a strategic technology for a wide range of mission critical solutions including video communications, training, support, and software delivery."

As companies deliver more high quality video, large software updates, and other digital content files within corporations and on the public Internet, the threat of Gridlock threatens to overload and shut down delivery networks. Kontiki eliminates network Gridlock and delivers digital content to virtually any size audience by efficiently and securely utilizing existing computing resources. Companies using Kontiki include Adobe, CNET Networks, Ernst & Young, Palm, and VeriSign. Companies typically realize a 70-90 percent cost savings since Kontiki efficiently utilizes existing resources and automatically scales to meet user demand.

Kontiki said the additional funds will be used to further advance its product development and enhance its sales efforts. Recently, Kontiki's installed base has increased to 19 million users around the globe. In addition, the company released version 4.0 of its Delivery Management System software last month, while recently adding several new large customers including a leading financial services institution and a multi-billion telecommunications company.

"We've been impressed by MK Capital's inherent understanding of the rapidly growing need for networks to better deliver digital content securely and quickly, whether through a corporate network or the public Internet," said Bryan Plug, Kontiki's president and CEO. "We look forward to their insight and involvement as Kontiki moves into its next stage of development."

MK Capital is a $150 million venture capital fund that invests in applied technology and outsourced business service companies that dramatically improve business efficiency or effectiveness. MK has already made five investments with its latest fund and is actively screening additional investment opportunities that meet its criteria.