Producing high-quality content for professional video is time-consuming and expensive, but advances in AI technology are giving businesses more options. One of the companies making waves in this space is his Synthesia, his AI video generation platform that just raised $90 million in Series C funding following an investment from Nvidia.
Synthesia allows companies to create educational videos featuring stock or custom AI avatars. Stock avatars are created using a sophisticated process that begins with filming real-life actors in a professional studio. The actor is filmed reciting the script, and this footage is used to create the actor’s digital twin, his AI avatar. For custom AI avatars, users can request the use of their likeness through a similar process. Both stock and custom avatars can speak in over 60 different languages and accents and can be used in training videos, how-to guides, and other business-related video content.
“We have made great strides towards our vision of making video easily accessible to everyone, but we still have a long way to go. We are proud of our team for building a sustainable company that delivers business utility,” said Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia co-founder and CEO.
The Synthesia platform boasts 456% year-over-year growth and has generated over 12 million videos to date. The company has served more than 50,000 companies worldwide, and customers report savings of up to 95% in production time, leading to thousands of dollars in cost savings. Synthesia counts Tiffany, IHG, Moody’s Analytics and United Nations Agencies among its customers.
An example of one of the stock AI avatars available on the Synthesia platform. (Source: Sinceresia)
Latest funding round led by Accel with investment from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, with participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins, GV, Firstmark Capital, Alex Wang, Olivier Pomel and Amjadmasad Did.
Riparberg said in a statement that while the company is not actively seeking new investments, Accel and NVIDIA will transform traditional video production into digital workflows that help creators bring their ideas to life. He said he shared a vision.
“From our first meeting, Synthesia stood out as one of the few generative AI companies that combined differentiated technology, a great founding team, and a very strong ROI for our enterprise customers,” said a partner at Accel. said Philippe Bottelli. “By dramatically reducing video costs and production time, Synthesia is pioneering a new range of use cases for corporate training, marketing and communication videos.”
Synthesia said the new funding will be used to accelerate AI research, an area the company has focused on building its core technology in-house since its inception in 2017. The R&D team cooperates with TUM (Technical University of Munich) and UCL (University College). London) and is behind several AI breakthroughs, according to a statement.
In a blog post, Riparbelli wrote that the company is working on next-generation avatar technology that will give avatars more facial expressions, more natural movements, better voices and more customization options.
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