Once the pandemic normalized virtual meetups, the concept of “personalized AI” began to gain steam.
Startups creating “AI-driven” avatars — realistic-looking characters with synthetic voices that star in pre-recorded or live videos — have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital over the past few years. As such avatars improve, they promise to deliver more personalized digital marketing and training experiences while reducing the costs typically associated with video production.
That’s at least the sales pitch from Synthesia, one of the startups using AI to create synthetic videos for advertising and other use cases. The company yesterday announced that it raised $90 million in a Series C round led by Accel with a strategic investment from Nvidia and participation from Kleiner Perkins, GV, Firstmark Capital and MMC. The round brings Synthesia’s total raised to date to $156.6 million, and it values the startup ...
