A London-based startup called Synthesia claims that their very realistic AI avatar technology is popular with businesses. A total of 60,000 businesses, or one million customers, use it to create avatar-based movies from texts for training, sales, and marketing, among other purposes.
VCs now wish to participate as well. Today, Synthesia announced that it has concluded a $180 million Series D fundraising round, boosting the company's worth to $2.1 billion. NEA is leading the round with the participation of new investors WiL, Atlassian Ventures, and PSP Growth. So far, Synthesia has gained $330 million.
Synthesia Startup Plans
Since Europe and North America now account for most of Synthesia's tasks, the startup intends to use the funds to hire, expand in Asia Pacific, and further develop its product line.
Victor Riparbelli, CEO of the company, said in an interview:
“We're improving everything, and we're already doing well. Our goal is to improve our avatars.” He said, our company’s long roadmap is for avatars to connect with users, deal with items to provide physical talks, have more realistic movement, and have the ability to move avatars into various environments.
M&A is one sector that doesn't push activities. Synthesia does not yet own any companies, and according to Riparbelli, the company prefers to develop its own technology while using APIs for things it cannot.
AI Companies Fundraising
In November 2024, Synthesia was raising $150 million, indicating that the company has been working on its round for at least a few months. For a bit of background on financing, Synthesia last announced investment almost 18 months ago. In June 2023, the company secured a $90 million round on a $1 billion valuation.
VCs have been attracted to AI businesses, which have been a bright spot in a really dismal fundraising environment. AI firms made up over 37% of the $368.5 billion invested in all startups worldwide in 2024. The ratio was even more evident in the United States, where AI startups received almost half the $209 billion funding the previous year.
Advanced Technology of Synthesia
During the announcement of its massive AI action plan this week, the U.K. government named Synthesia as one of the companies it intended to award billions of dollars in deals to AI companies to restore the economy and the public sector.
The race for products does not exclude Synthesia. It has been developing a "2.0" version of its platform for some time now. It has already made several relevant features available, such as its version of emotional personal avatars that users may create using a laptop camera or a phone.
Vidu Shanmugarajah, Google Ventures partner said:
“Just a small number of AI firms, including Synthesia, are able to take truly advanced AI and turn it into something useful. It is highly customer-oriented. They have an obsession with promoting value in a useful context. It's quite difficult to put that together in a secure and approved platform.”