AI video startup HeyGen raises $60 million, valued at over $500 million

AIbase

Published inAI News · 3 min read · Jun 21, 2024

226

AI video startup HeyGen has successfully raised $60 million in its Series A funding round, with the company now valued at over $500 million. This round was led by Benchmark.

HeyGen offers an innovative service that allows businesses to generate, localize, and personalize videos using virtual avatars without the need for cameras or production teams.

Since the second quarter of 2023, HeyGen has been profitable, growing its annual revenue from $1 million to over $35 million. Its client base spans from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. HeyGen plans to use this new capital to expand its product offerings and invest in corporate security, AI ethics, trust, and safety.

HeyGen's success is not just reflected in its financial growth; it also showcases the broad potential of AI technology in the video production field. By using virtual avatars, HeyGen has lowered the barriers to video production, making video content creation more convenient and efficient. As AI technology continues to advance, HeyGen's business model could have a profound impact on the video production industry.

Key Points:

- 💰 HeyGen secures $60 million in Series A funding, valuing the company at over $500 million.

- 📈 Annual revenue grows from $1 million to over $35 million.

- 🛍️ Clientele includes small businesses and Fortune 500 companies.

Japanese Supermarkets Use AI to Monitor Employees' Smiles, Netizens Say It's Unnecessary

In today's pursuit of efficient and humanized management, Aeon, a large Japanese supermarket chain, has sparked widespread controversy by using AI technology to monitor employee smiles.On July 16, Yahoo Japan reported that Aeon has rolled out an AI system called "Smile-Kun" in 240 stores since July 1. This system analyzes employees' smiles and volume, providing real-time feedback to enhance customer service skills.The Smile-Kun system requires employees to greet it daily, then scores them based

Musk's xAI to Launch Grok 2 Next Month, Grok 3 Expected in December

Elon Musk recently announced in an interview with psychologist and author Jordan Peterson that xAI will release its latest artificial intelligence model, Grok2, next month.Musk stated that Grok2's performance is expected to be on par with GPT-4, having been trained on approximately 15,000 H100 GPUs. Meanwhile, the release of Grok3 is scheduled for December, which Musk claims will be the most powerful AI model.During the interview, Musk further revealed that Grok3 is currently being trained at th

Xiaohongshu Launches First 'AI Convenience Store' to Support Quality AI Notes with Traffic Boosts of 30,000 to 500,000

Recently, Xiaohongshu officially announced the launch of an intriguing tech account named "TechPotato," introducing its entrepreneurial project: the world's first AI-powered convenience store.According to official information, the "AI Convenience Store" is a collaboration between TechPotato and top authors across the web, along with renowned tech companies, to curate the most authentic and visually appealing AI-related content, which is then offered as "limited edition products" for continuous o

Microsoft Research Introduces AI Framework E5-V: Simplifying Multimodal Learning with Text Pair Unimodal Training to Reduce Costs

Recently, a research team from Microsoft Research and Beihang University has jointly introduced a novel framework called E5-V, aimed at providing a more efficient solution for multi-modal embeddings. With the continuous advancement of artificial intelligence, multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) have become a focal point of research, as they are capable of understanding both textual and visual information simultaneously, thereby better handling complex data relationships. However, effective