As OpenAI, Google and Adobe compete with startups like Runway to create Hollywood-ready AI video tools, one British startup is taking a very different approach. You need to help companies create educational videos that other people watch.
It’s a boring but lucrative niche for Synthesia, which just raised $180 million in a targeted investment circular through NEA that valued the London-based startup at more than $2. 1 billion. Chemical giant DuPont, printer maker Xerox and airline Spirit now use Synthesia avatars to deliver protection briefings and other videos in more than 20 languages with a single click.
“People are taking text and slide content and turning it into video now,” says Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia’s CEO and co-founder. “You can think of it like Powerpoint 2.0 with the same type of user and use case,”
Synthesia reportedly generated more than $70 million in profit last year, more than doubling its $31. 3 million profit in 2023, according to company filings. With its $180 million in investments and new investors Atlassian Ventures and billionaire Penny Pritzker’s fund PSP Growth, Synthesia plans to invest in making its avatars more realistic and in equipment to make it less difficult to create and host videos .
Riparbelli says that some of his clients are already using Synthesia avatars to front marketing videos, and some Tiktok creators are using them to produce videos, but the technology isn’t ready yet to push into advertising, or content production. “We have some big models training right now that I think will probably begin to get us over that threshold within the next like, three to six months,” he says.
That could push Synthesia into competition with AI giants like OpenAI and its Sora video generator and startup Runway. “We don’t care about AI video as in ‘here’s a thing that can make absolutely anything you can think of,'” says Riparbelli, a 30 Under 30 alum. “We only care about humans and videos and presenters for business content.”
Riparbelli believes that limiting Synthesia to human representatives only, rather than modeling spaceships, dragons, and other fantastical creations, will allow it to stay in the game against rivals with greater firepower. And chances are, your clients are overworked HR groups. than Hollywood administrators or special effects stars. “I don’t see the festival in terms of a model. . . and none of those corporations have yet entered our sector,” he says.
Synthesia says it has also taken a cautious approach on content moderation running checks on scripts and videos being produced on its platform. Only corporate clients are allowed to produce news-focused or political content, that comes after the New York Times reported Synthesia avatars were used to pump out videos for a pro-China disinformation campaign. The risks could increase as Synthesia begins to roll out generic avatars that aren’t trained off a specific human presenter. “The more powerful AI models gets the more important that content moderation gets,” he Riparbelli.