Elemental Technologies, which has developed an innovative GPU-based video processing technology, has raised a $13 million Series C round led by Norwest Venture Partners, to fund international and product expansion. Total financing raised to date is $29.6 million. Elemental's CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman told me yesterday that the company racked up "8-digits" in revenues last year, up from "7-digits" in the two prior years, and has been close to being cash flow positive for the last couple of quarters.

Elemental is a key beneficiary of the rush by content providers and pay-TV operators to make video available online and on mobile devices. Elemental now has 140 customers, including big names like HBO GO, Comcast Xfinity and ESPN. The company also recently announced it will power multi-screen video for this summer's London Olympics for six international broadcasters.  

Sam said Elemental's use of GPUs lead to several key competitive advantages: higher quality video, higher density of processing (which saves on rack space, power and HVAC), new, cutting edge codecs based on Linux, and a user-friendly interface. Elemental's wins are split 50-50 between greenfield customers bringing their video online for the first time and situations where Elemental is displacing existing encoding and trancoding solutions from competitors like Inlet (Cisco), Envivio, Harmonic and others.

Elemental is also announcing today that Kevin O'Hara, chairman of Integra Telecom, and founding COO of Level 3 has become its chairman.