Synthesia, an AI video creation platform for enterprises, has become the UK’s latest unicorn after raising £71 million in Series C funding.
The London company – 15th on our MediaTech 50 ranking this year – aims to make video production simple and intuitive, without the need for cameras or studios. An avatar created on the platform is featured in the main image above.
The round, which values the company at $1 billion, is led by Accel with investment from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, and participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins, GV, Firstmark Capital, Alex Wang, Olivier Pomel, and Amjad Masad.
With a year-over-year user growth rate of 456% and over 12 million videos generated on the platform to date, the company has consistently driven triple-digit growth while serving more than 50,000 businesses across the globe.
“We’ve made great strides toward our vision to make video easy for everyone, but there’s still a long way to go,” said Synthesia co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli.
“I’m proud of our team for building Synthesia into a sustainable company that delivers real business utility, not just novelty, for our thousands of customers.
“While we weren’t actively looking for new investment, Accel and NVIDIA share our vision for transforming traditional video production into a digital workflow that will enable creators to bring their ideas, from training videos to Hollywood films, to life with only a Synthesia account.
“I’m delighted to have them on board as we accelerate our AI research efforts.”
MediaTech 50 – UK’s most innovative media tech creators for 2023
Synthesia’s platform aims to allow any enterprise user, from HR managers to marketers, to easily create high-quality instructional videos featuring stock or custom AI avatars. It says clients report up to 95% saved in production time, amounting to thousands of dollars in reduced costs and increased engagement from their employees and customers.
The company has also announced the addition of Tiffany’s, IHG, Moody’s Analytics, and entities of the United Nations to its customer base, which already includes 35% of the Fortune 100.
“From our first meeting, Synthesia stood out as one of the few generative AI companies combining a differentiated technology, an exceptional founding team, and a very strong ROI for its enterprise customers,” said Philippe Botteri, partner at Accel.
“By dramatically lowering the cost and production time of videos, Synthesia is opening a new range of use cases for corporate training, marketing, and communication videos. With their research team constantly pushing the limits of AI video generation, I could not be more excited about our investment in the company.”
Since its founding in 2017, Synthesia has been solving some of the toughest challenges in AI, building its core technology in-house. The R&D team collaborates with TUM (Technical University of Munich) and UCL (University College London) and is behind several AI breakthroughs.
“The transformative power of generative AI is providing new capabilities to a broad range of industries,” said Mohamed Siddeek, head of NVentures, NVIDIA. “Synthesia is doing breakthrough work bringing these tools to enterprise video production, helping to enable a future where anyone can generate studio-grade videos without the physical barriers of cameras or microphones.”
Synthesia is a launch partner of the Partnership on AI (PAI) on Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media, the first industry wide framework for the ethical and responsible development, creation, and sharing of synthetic media.