Who Owns Moonbug Entertainment?

René Rechtman founded the company in London on February 9, 2018, initially registered as Project ABC Holdings Limited, alongside John Robson, a former managing director at WildBrain. Rechtman had previously served as president of international at Maker Studios. The pair raised venture backing from The Raine Group, Felix Capital, and others to pursue a deliberate strategy: acquire the most-watched children's channels on YouTube and convert them into global intellectual property franchises.

The first purchase was Little Baby Bum, an animated nursery-rhyme channel run by a husband-and-wife team outside London. Moonbug doubled its viewership within months by applying publishing discipline and platform distribution. Acquisitions of Morphle TV and other channels followed, funded by successive rounds including a $120 million raise in July 2020 led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity and Fertitta Capital.

The company transformed its scale in July 2020 with the simultaneous acquisitions of CoComelon, the most-viewed channel on YouTube, and Blippi, the leading live-action preschool property. The deals made Moonbug the world's largest digital kids' media company, with more than 235 million monthly subscribers and 7 billion average monthly views. The November 2021 sale to Candle Media capped a three-year rise from startup to a $3 billion asset.

Under Candle, Moonbug added the Little Angel franchise, launched the Disney co-produced Morphle and the Magic Pets series in 2024, expanded into music and live events, and began rolling out the Moonbug Channel, a linear feed of its properties, across EMEA pay-TV operators including KPN in the Netherlands in April 2026. Its portfolio now stands at 29 intellectual properties distributed in 32 languages on more than 150 platforms.