Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Synthesia
The London company, founded in 2017 by Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild and computer-vision professors Matthias Niessner and Lourdes Agapito, that sells AI-generated presenter videos — a realistic digital "avatar" reading a script in any of well over a hundred languages — to corporate training, internal-communications and marketing teams. Synthesia chose early to be an enterprise product with strict consent rules rather than a consumer deepfake app: avatars of real people are made only with their permission, and stock avatars may not be used for political or news-style content. It became the best-known British generative-AI company of the period: a unicorn at ~$1bn (June 2023), ~$2.1bn (January 2025), more than $100m of annual recurring revenue (ARR) with an Adobe Ventures investment (April 2025) and a $200m Series E led by GV at ~$4bn (January 2026), when its CFO put ARR at ~$150m (reported). Its tools were also used in 2023 for pro-China and pro-Venezuelan-government propaganda videos, the episode that defined its moderation policies.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2017, London, by Victor Riparbelli (CEO), Steffen Tjerrild (co-founder; operating and finance roles, verify current title), Matthias Niessner (Technical University of Munich) and Lourdes Agapito (University College London)
- Headquarters
- London, with offices in New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich and Zurich (reported, verify current list)
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors include LDV Capital, Mark Cuban (early, reported), FirstMark, MMC Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, GV (Google Ventures), Accel, NVentures (Nvidia), NEA, WiL, Atlassian Ventures, PSP Growth, Air Street Capital and Adobe Ventures (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Victor Riparbelli (co-founder and CEO); Steffen Tjerrild (co-founder); Daniel Kim (CFO, reported); Niessner and Agapito (co-founders, research)
- AI products
- Synthesia STUDIO (browser-based video creation from text); stock avatars (230+ by 2025, company claim) and custom "personal" avatars; Expressive Avatars (EXPRESS-1, April 2024; EXPRESS-2, 2025); AI dubbing and translation into 140+ languages (company claim); video agents and interactive avatars (Synthesia 3.0, October 2025); integrations with learning-management systems
- Scale
- >$100m ARR (April 2025, company); ~$150m ARR (January 2026, CFO to CNBC); target >$200m during or by end-2026 (company); 2025 group accounts reported at ~$113m revenue and ~$70m pre-tax loss (single secondary source, verify against Companies House); customers include a large share of the Fortune 100 (company claim; percentages quoted vary, verify)
- Capital raised
- ~$3.1m seed (2019, reported); $12.5m Series A led by FirstMark (April 2021); $50m Series B (December 2021, reported lead Kleiner Perkins, verify); $90m Series C at ~$1bn led by Accel with NVentures (June 2023); $180m Series D at ~$2.1bn led by NEA (January 2025); Adobe Ventures strategic investment (April 2025, undisclosed); $200m Series E at ~$4bn led by GV, with an employee secondary sale (26 January 2026). Total primary funding ~$530m+ (sum of reported rounds, stylized)
- Key partnerships
- Shutterstock (video-footage licence to train EXPRESS-2, 2025); Adobe (investor; ~$3bn acquisition talks failed, October 2025, reported); Nvidia (investor); learning-platform and enterprise-software integrations (company)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the consent-first rules (2017); the self-serve studio and training focus (2020–21); the propaganda misuse (2023); the Series C unicorn round (2023); Expressive Avatars and the actors behind them (2024); the Series D, $100m ARR and Adobe Ventures (2025); the Shutterstock licence and EXPRESS-2 (2025); the Adobe approach and Synthesia 3.0 agents (2025); the Series E at $4bn (2026)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2017
Founding and the Consent First Rules
Founding
2021
Self Serve Studio and the Enterprise Training Focus
Product launch / pivot from services to software / funding rounds
2023
Propaganda Misuse Wolf News and Venezuela
Safety incident (failure) and policy response
2023
Series C Unicorn Round with Accel and Nvidia
Funding round
2024
Expressive Avatars and the Actors Behind Them
Model release / controversy over performers' likenesses
2025
Adobe Approach Declined and Synthesia 3 0 Agents
M&A approach (declined) / product launch
2025
Series D 100m ARR and Adobe Ventures
Funding round / strategic investment
2025
Shutterstock Licence and EXPRESS 2
Licensing deal (training data) / model release
2026
Series E 4bn and the Employee Secondary
Funding round / secondary sale