- Artificial intelligence-based video generation platform Synthesia has raised $90 million from investors, the company exclusively told CNBC.
- The round, which values the company at $1 billion, was led by venture capital firm Accel and backed by US chipmaker Nvidia.
- Synthesia will use the money to invest in AI research and to advance collaborations with leading universities such as Munich’s TUM and London’s UCL.
An animated avatar generated by the Synthesia AI video platform.
synthesis
Synthesia, a digital media platform that allows users to create videos generated with artificial intelligence, has raised $90 million from investors including US chip giant Nvidia, the company exclusively told CNBC.
The London-based company raised the money in a funding round led by Accel, an early investor in Facebook, Slack and Spotify. Nvidia came into play as a strategic investor, investing an undisclosed amount of money. Other investors include Kleiner Perkins, GV, FirstMark Capital and MMC.
Founded in 2017 by researchers and entrepreneurs Victor Riparbelli, Matthias Niessner, Steffen Tjerrild and Lourdes Agapito, Synthesia develops software that allows people to create their own digital avatars to give company presentations, training videos – or even compliments to colleagues in over 120 different languages to transfer.
The ultimate goal is to eliminate cameras, microphones, actors, tedious editing, and other costs from the professional video production process. To do this, Synthesia created animated avatars that look and sound like humans but are generated by AI. The avatars are based on real actors speaking in front of a green screen.
“Productivity can be improved because you reduce the cost of video production to the cost of creating a PowerPoint presentation,” Philippe Botteri of Accel, the lead investor in Synthesia’s Series C, told CNBC, adding that adoption of videos among consumers have surged on platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok.
“Video is a much better way to convey knowledge. When we think about the company’s potential and valuation, we think about what it can give back.” [and] In the case of Synthesia, we are only scratching the surface.”
Synthesia is a form of generative AI, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the company says it has been working on its own proprietary generative AI for years and that while ChatGPT has only recently entered the public consciousness, generative AI itself is not a new technology.
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Synthesia sells to enterprise customers including Tiffany’s, IHG and Moody’s Analytics. The company doesn’t disclose its sales or earnings metrics, but says it has “continuously delivered triple-digit growth” and has produced over 12 million videos on the platform to date. The number of Synthesia users has increased by 456% year-on-year, according to the company.
Synthesia plans to increase investment in its technology, with a particular focus on further developing its AI research and empowering Synthesia avatars to perform more tasks.
“We work with 35% of the Fortune 100 [with a focus on] “Product marketing, customer support, customer success — areas of the business where you have a lot of text that you want to turn into video,” Riparbelli told CNBC.
“As we move to the next phase of the next generation of Synthesia technology, the main focus is on giving avatars more expressiveness, enabling them to do more things, walk around a room and have conversations,” he added.
Riparbelli explained that Nvidia is not only a semiconductor manufacturer, but also a powerhouse of research and development talent with an army of engineers, academics and researchers writing articles on the subject.
“You’re not just a chipmaker,” he said. “You have amazing research teams that are at the forefront of how to actually train these large models? What works, what doesn’t work?”
Business Insider previously reported that Synthesia was in talks with investors to raise between $50 million and $75 million in new funds valued at around $1 billion.
The report didn’t provide any details on Nvidia’s involvement, nor did it mention the $90 million total.
Synthesia is one of many companies attracting investor interest with AI and enterprise software that can reduce the cost of certain business processes. Businesses are trying to cut spending everywhere to counter rising inflation and prepare for a potential recession.
Last week, French business planning software company Pigment raised $88 million from investors including Iconiq Growth, Felix Capital, Meritech IVP and FirstMark to increase its investments in AI, among others.
Generative AI has been a rare bright spot in a European tech market suffering from declining funding and a drop in valuations. Investors have shifted away from high-growth technology companies into value sectors with more stable income generation, such as financials, industrials, energy and consumer staples.
A recent report by venture capital firm Atomico showed that funding for European tech startups will fall another 39% in 2023, from $83 billion in 2022 to $51 billion.
However, AI is one area that’s attracting more investment, Atomico said, with generative AI accounting for 35% of total investment in AI and machine learning companies last year — the highest share ever and a big 5% jump in 2022.
There are concerns that using such advanced video AI tools as Synthesia could lead to deepfakes;
There are also growing calls from technology leaders and scientists for a global pause in AI development beyond systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4, amid fears the technology has progressed to the point where it poses an existential risk to humanity could.
Synthesia first caught mainstream attention in 2019 with a deepfake video that featured a digitally animated version of star footballer David Beckham speaking in nine languages about a campaign to eradicate malaria.
Although this was done with Beckham’s approval and for a good cause, the increased use of deepfake technology has raised concerns about the possibility of misinformation.
To counteract this, Synthesia kept ethics in mind when developing its software. The company requires consent from the people who appear as avatars in its software and uses a mix of humans and machine learning to target content such as profanity and hate speech.
In addition, the company has joined the Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media, a voluntary industry-wide framework for the ethical and responsible development, creation and distribution of synthetic media.
“There are a lot of different discourses going on at the moment. There’s one about the very long-term, existential risk scenarios. I think it’s also important to talk about it. But I’d like to see the focus more on where we stand.” Today?” Riparbelli told CNBC in an interview.
“These technologies are already powerful. How do we deal with hallucinations? How do we deal with all the problems that arise?” he added. “There are definitely pitfalls. But I also think there are so many ways to level the playing field and allow people to do much more with less.”