Synthetic Media Startup Rephrase.ai Raises $10.6M

Synthetic media startup Rephrase.ai has raised $10.6 million in a Series A funding round led by Red Ventures. Rephrase offers companies a platform for producing videos of virtual humans with synthetic voices reading out a script for marketing, sales, and other business needs.

Rephrase Video

Clients pick out a virtual character design and voice, then place them in a digital environment and upload their script. The AI processes the script through the voice model and matches the chosen avatar’s lip movements to the words to mimic how a real human would look and sound while performing. They can then embed the video on their website, social media page, or wherever else they choose.

“We started Rephrase.ai four years ago with the goal of building an engine that can make creating professional quality videos as easy as writing text. In the last year, we’ve developed hundreds of digital human clones, creating millions of videos during the process,” Rephrase.ai CEO Ashray Malhotra said. “The intent of humanizing communications is to bring the ability to communicate with people, like people.”

Synthetic Success

Rephrase plans to put the new capital, which brings its total funding to $12.5 million, toward further scaling its business and developing new integrations for its technology. Synthetic media startups are mushrooming and drawing plenty of investment for their different angles on producing videos with AI-powered characters and voices. Just in the last few months, synthetic media startups like Synthesia, Neosapience, Hour One, Papercup, and D-ID have all shared new variations on the concept. Synthetic media has spread to the point where Metaphysic almost won America’s Got Talent with its digital recreations of singing celebrities. Demand for synthetic media is skyrocketing, however, so there’s likely plenty of opportunity for Rephrase to carve out a share of the market even as ever more potential rivals pop up.

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