Synthesia snaps up $180M at a $2.1B valuation for its B2B AI video platform

As the world goes on work through how handle With the explosion of deepfake content online, it seems that not all AI-generated videos are generating controversy. SynesthesiaA London startup building products based on highly realistic AI avatar technology says it’s a big hit with enterprises, some 60,000 of them — 1 million users — tapping the technology to create avatar-based videos from text documents, training for sales and marketing. And much more.

Now the VC also wants to take action. Synthesia confirmed today that it has closed a funding round of $180 million, a Series D that values ​​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, and previous backers GV and MMC Ventures. Synthesia has raised $330 million to date.

The startup plans to use the funds for hiring, particularly to expand in Asia Pacific — the bulk of Synthesia’s business is today in Europe and North America — and to continue developing its products.

“We’re doubling down on all the things we’re already doing right,” CEO and co-founder Victor Ripperbelli said in an interview. “We want to make our avatars better.” He said the company has more realistic pace on its “longer roadmap”; Being able to port avatars to different environments; Avatars that can interact with objects, for example, provide physical displays; and avatars that can interact with users. It will eat some of its own dogfood by creating more “agents” to help customers create avatar-based content more easily.

One area where it does not chase activity is M&A. Synthesia has not made any acquisitions to date, and RipperBelly says it prefers to build its technology in-house, as well as use APIs it doesn’t build itself. For example, it works with Eleven Labs for voice, and it taps and fine-tunes various third-party major language models rather than building its own.

Synthesia Round has been in the works for at least a few months: info Report That it had raised $150 million in November 2024. In a bit more fundraising context, it’s been almost 18 months since Synthesia last disclosed funding: in June 2023, it Closes a $90 million round at a $1 billion valuation With previous backers including Kleiner Perkins and Accel.

In the interim, AI companies have been a huge magnet for VCs, providing a bright spot A somewhat missing fund in the landscape. According to Pitchbook data, AI startups will account for more than 37% of the $368.5 billion invested in all startups globally in 2024. The ratio was even more pronounced in the US, with AI startups garnering nearly 50% of the $209 billion invested last year.

And yes, problems with AI are plentiful. Energy consumption required to train and run AI models, major copyright issues about how the models are trained, AI surgery in case of deepfake or malicious hacking, AI replacing humans and their work, and AI making mistakes – all big issues that have yet to be meaningfully resolved. not done But there are also some notable advocates who will push the AI ​​industry to even higher, hyped-up heights. Synthesia was a company name-checked when it was launched by the UK government this week Big AI action planAiming to make billions in deals with AI companies to revamp public services and the economy

Synthesia says it now has 60,000 businesses as customers, up from 50,000 in June 2023, and aims to carve its own space in the space as the go-to platform for enterprises looking to build their video interactions.

This is being done at a time when advanced AI video functionality is becoming increasingly common. There are startups that are working on the ability to extrapolate Full product video Beyond basic documents, others aim to build Avatars capable of real-time interaction And Real-time video assistant. Some even claim to be able to create animated avatars of their users Just a one minute video. (A simple test to see how crowded the market is here is to put Synthesia into Google, and check how many companies are buying search ads against its name. There are a lot.)

Synthesia is not immune to product race. It has been building a “2.0” version of its platform for some time now and has already released several related features, including its own take. personal avatar A feature that users can create with a laptop camera or phone emotion; A Chrome extension which generates basic video based on screen data; One’s own version AI video assistant which can convert documents to video; Multiple language options; And collaboration features for people to edit a video at the same time.

Most importantly, though, Ripperbelly believes the company’s focus entirely on business users, and its investors say that’s what makes the startup so attractive.

“Synthesia is one of only a handful of AI companies that can actually take state-of-the-art AI and translate it into something practically useful,” Bidu Shanmugarajah, a partner at Google Ventures in London, said in an interview. “It has extreme customer focus. They are obsessed with driving value in a practical environment. It’s very difficult to integrate it into a platform that is secure and compliant.”

It’s also interesting to see Atlassian invest in this round. The company is injecting AI functionality into its various apps, and it seems only a matter of time before a platform like Jira starts adding more video tools to that mix, open. Door to collaboration with its portfolio companies.