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As the world goes on to work on how catch With the explosion of deepfake content online, it seems that not all AI-generated videos are controversial. SynthesisA London startup building products around highly realistic AI avatar technology says it’s a big hit with businesses, with about 60,000 of them — 1 million users — tapping the technology to create avatar-based videos from text documents for sales and marketing. training etc.
Now VCs want in on the action too. Synthesia confirmed today that it has closed a $180 million Series D funding round, valuing the company at $2.1 billion. NEA is leading the round with participation from new 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 startup plans to use the funding to hire, expand in particular in the Asia Pacific region — Synthesia’s business today is primarily in Europe and North America — and continue to improve its products.
“We’re doubling down on everything we’re already doing right,” CEO and co-founder Victor Riparbelli said in an interview. “We want to make our avatars better.” According to him, the company’s “long road map” includes more realistic action; being able to move avatars to different environments; for example, avatars that can interact with objects to provide physical displays; and avatars that can interact with users. It will also eat some of its test products, creating more “agents” to help customers create avatar-based content more easily.
One area where he does not pursue activity is M&A. Synthesia hasn’t made any acquisitions to date, and Riparbelli said his preference is to build the technology in-house and use APIs since he doesn’t build it himself. For example, it works with Eleven Labs for voice and taps into and refines various third-party Large Language Models instead of building its own.
The Synthesia round has been working for at least a few months: Info informed In November 2024, it announced that it had raised $150 million. To raise a bit more, it’s been almost 18 months since Synthesia last announced funding: in June 2023 It closed a $90 million round valued at $1 billion With previous backers including Kleiner Perkins and Accel.
In the interim, AI companies have been a huge magnet for VCs bright place in a somewhat weaker funding landscape. According to PitchBook data, AI startups accounted for more than 37% of the $368.5 billion invested in all startups globally in 2024. The ratio was even steeper in the US, where AI startups raised nearly 50% of the $209 billion invested last year.
Synthesia says it’s up to 60,000 customers now, compared to 50,000 in June 2023, and it aims to establish itself in the space as the go-to platform for enterprises looking to build video interactions.
It does so at a time when advanced AI video functionality is becoming more and more common. There are startups working on extrapolation capability full product videos outside of the main documents, while others aim to establish avatars that can interact in real time and real-time video assistants. Some claim to be able to create live avatars of their users just a one minute video. (A simple test to see how crowded the market is here is to Google Synthesia and see how many companies are getting search ads against its name. There are a lot.)
Synthesis is not immune to product competition. It has been building the “2.0” version of its platform for some time now and has already introduced a number of related features, including its own adoption. personal avatars feature that users can do with their laptop camera or phone emotions; a Chrome extension builds basic videos based on screen data; own version AI video assistant which can convert documents into videos; multiple language options; and collaboration features for people to edit video simultaneously.
However, Riparbelli believes the company has an advantage by focusing on business users, which its investors say is what makes the startup attractive.
“Synthesia is one of the few AI companies that can take real advanced AI and turn it into something real useful,” Vidu Shanmugarajah, a partner at Google Ventures in London, said in an interview. “He has extreme customer focus. They are interested in the cost of driving in practical conditions. It is very difficult to combine this in a secure and compatible platform.”
It’s also interesting to see Atlassian investing in this round. The company is incorporating AI functionality into its various apps, and it looks like a platform like Jira may start adding more video tools to the mix. It is a gateway to cooperation with a portfolio company.
