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As the world remain towork throughhow tohandlethe burst of deepfake content online , it seems that not all AI - created television are stimulate controversy . Synthesia , a London startup building products around highly realistic AI avatar technology , say it ’s a big hit with enterprises , with some 60,000 of them — 1 million users — tapping the technical school to build up avatar - found video recording from school text documents , as well as for sales event and merchandising , training , and more .
Now VCs also want to get in on the action . Synthesia today confirmed that it has closed a financial backing round of $ 180 million , a Series D that catapult the caller ’s valuation to $ 2.1 billion . NEA is lead the round , with engagement from Modern investors WiL ( World Innovation Lab ) , Atlassian Ventures , and PSP Growth , plus previous backers GV and MMC Ventures . Synthesia has raised $ 330 million to date .
The inauguration plans to use the financing for hiring , particularly to inflate in Asia Pacific — the bulk of Synthesia ’s business today is in Europe and North America — and to continue evolving its products .
“ We ’re repeat down on all the thing we ’re already doing rightfulness , ” said CEO and co - founder Victor Riparbelli , in an interview . “ We want to make our avatar well . ” He said the company ’s “ tenacious roadmap ” includes more naturalistic movement ; being capable to port avatars into different environments ; avatars that can interact with objects to , for example , provide physical demonstrations ; and avatars that can interact with users . It ’s also plump to be eating some of its own dogfood by work up more “ agent ” to help client make avatar - base content more easy .
One expanse where it ’s not chasing bodily function is in M&A. Synthesia to date has made no acquisitions and Riparbelli said its preference is for progress its engineering in house , alongside using APIs for what it does not work up itself . For model , it works with ElevenLabs for voice , and it taps and hunky-dory - tunes a diverseness of third - party large language model instead of work up its own .
Synthesia ’s round has been in the kit and caboodle for at least a few calendar month : The Informationreportedthat it was raising $ 150 million in November 2024 . For a little more fundraising context of use , it ’s been about 18 month since Synthesia last disclosed financing : In June 2023 , itclosed a $ 90 million rhythm on a $ 1 billion valuationwith previous backer , including Kleiner Perkins and Accel .
In the interim , AI company have been a Brobdingnagian magnet for VCs , providing abright spotin a somewhat lustreless funding landscape . AI startups report for more than 37 % of the $ 368.5 billion invested across all startups in 2024 globally , according to PitchBook data . In the U.S. the balance was even more stark , with AI startups garner nearly 50 % of the $ 209 billion vest last year .
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And yes , issuance abound in the field of AI . The power consumption require to groom and run AI manikin , major right of first publication consequence around how models are trained , AI getting weaponized as in the case of deepfakes or malicious hacking , AI put back humans and their work , and AI get it haywire — all huge trouble that have yet to be resolved meaningfully . But there are also some meaning counselor who will tug the AI manufacture into even loftier , hyped - up heights . Synthesia was one of the companies name - checked by the U.K. government this week when it launched itsbig AI action at law program , with an intention to dole out 1000000000000 in mountain to AI companies to reconstruct public services and the saving .
Synthesia say it now has 60,000 businesses as customers , compared to 50,000 in June 2023 , and its aim has been to chip at out its own niche in the space as the go - to platform for enterprise that are looking to build up out their video interactions .
It ’s doing so at a time when advanced AI video functionality is getting progressively more common . There are startups that are working on the power to extrapolatefull product videosout of basic documents , while others purport to buildavatars capable of real - time interactionsandreal - time video assistants . Some claim to be able to create natural avatars of their drug user fromjust one minute of video . ( A simple trial run to see just how crowded the marketplace is here is to put Synthesia into Google , and go over out how many company are bribe hunt ads against its name . There are a heap . )
Synthesia is not resistant to the product race . It ’s been building a “ 2.0 ” version of its platform for a while now and has already released a act of related features , including its own take onpersonal avatarsthat user can make with a laptop camera or earpiece that featureemotions ; aChrome extensionthat builds basic videos based on screen data point ; its own version of anAI video recording assistantthat can convert documents into video ; multi - terminology option ; and collaborationism feature for people to edit a picture simultaneously .
More to the point , though , Riparbelli think that the company has an edge by focusing itself squarely on business enterprise users , and its investor say that is what establish the inauguration attractive .
“ Synthesia is one of only a handful of AI company that can take rattling newspaper clipping boundary AI and in reality translate those into something with veridical utility , ” said Vidu Shanmugarajah , a partner at Google Ventures in London , in an interview . “ It has extreme client focus . They are ghost with force back value in a practical setting . invest that together in a platform that ’s safe and compliant is passing hard to do . ”
It ’s interesting , too , to see Atlassian investing in this circle . The party has been throw in AI functionality into its various apps , and it seems only a matter of clip that a platform like Jira might start tot in more video tools into that mix , opening the room access for a collaboration with its portfolio ship’s company .
