Philo, Inc.

Philo, Inc. is a privately held American internet television company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded at Harvard University in 2010 as Tivli by Tuan Ho and Nicholas Krasney, the company rebranded as Philo and launched its direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2017. Philo is venture-backed, with major media companies such as AMC Networks, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global among its investors. As a private entity, it does not have a public stock ticker. The company reportedly had over 1.3 million subscribers as of early 2025 and an employee count of approximately 160-200 people.

Philo operates as an over-the-top (OTT) streaming television provider, offering a subscription-based service with live and on-demand content. The service focuses on entertainment, lifestyle, and knowledge programming as a budget-friendly alternative to traditional cable and other live TV streaming services, notably by excluding more expensive sports and local channels. Its subscription plans, such as "Essential" and "Bundle+," provide access to over 70 cable channels and include an unlimited cloud-based DVR that stores recordings for one year. The service is accessible on a variety of devices, including smart TVs, digital media players, computers, and mobile phones.

Based on its litigation history, Philo is an operating company defending its technology in court. The provided data shows Philo, Inc. has been a defendant in two patent infringement lawsuits and has not been a plaintiff. This defendant-only posture is typical of a technology company being targeted by patent assertions rather than asserting its own patents. Both of its tracked cases were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

The two tracked cases against Philo were filed in September 2023 by DISH Technologies L.L.C. DISH Technologies is the intellectual property enforcement arm of DISH Network and has filed numerous lawsuits against other streaming services, often asserting patents related to adaptive bitrate streaming and other core delivery technologies. These suits place Philo among other OTT competitors targeted by the established satellite and streaming provider.