Prezent raises $30 million to amass AI companies companies — beginning with founder’s different firm | TechCrunch

Prezent, a startup that provides an AI-powered presentation builder to enterprises, mentioned right now that it has raised $30 million in funding led by Multiplier Capital, Greycroft, and Nomura Strategic Ventures, with participation from present traders like Emergent Ventures, WestWave Capital, and Alumni Ventures.

The Los Altos, California, startup, which is now valued at $400 million, has raised over $74 million so far. It plans to make use of the brand new capital largely for acquisitions.

The corporate has additionally made its first acquisition, shopping for Prezentium, a services-led presentation firm that operates within the life sciences vertical. In an uncommon association, Prezent founder Rahul Mishra was one of many co-founders of Prezentium. Mishra mentioned that because the starting of his new startup, he has been the non-operating president of Prezentium. Each startups have already got an present relationship, as Prezent makes use of Prezentium as a go-to-market accomplice. The acquisition basically brings Mishra’s two ventures below one roof, permitting Prezent to make use of Prezentium’s shopper base to supply its personal AI suite to extra clients.

There are many corporations making an attempt to create AI-powered presentation-building instruments, together with Shows.ai, Lica, Gamma, and Chronicle. Notably, all these corporations have Accel as a backer. Whereas most of them deal with shoppers and small enterprise customers, Prezent desires to stay to an enterprise technique, focusing on bigger firms. Beforehand, the corporate said that it desires to increase its choices to totally different verticals, together with finance and manufacturing. Nevertheless, Mishra famous that for now, the corporate desires to deal with serving purchasers within the life sciences and tech industries.

“There are plenty of tools that are trying to make presentations pretty. We want to provide the best tools for business communications. I think presentation is one of the frontiers in businesses that is not automated yet. We want to help data scientists and designers to communicate effectively with this automation,” Mishra informed TechCrunch.

Mishra, who beforehand labored at McKinsey, mentioned that the corporate is taking a specialised method to coaching AI fashions for displays for every particular business.

Prezent locations a presentation engineer, who’s aware of the business and the startup’s personal choices, in enterprises to assist totally different individuals inside the firm get used to constructing displays with AI instruments.

“The reality of AI in enterprise is that while AI can do many things, it can’t teach people [how] to use AI. That is why we want to place presentation engineers in companies to help our customers adopt the product faster,” Mishra mentioned.

AI startups wish to purchase companies corporations to make the most of present buyer bases and likewise present higher customization to enterprise purchasers. Digital avatar startup D-ID acquired Berlin-based video startup Simpleshow, and Google-backed authorized tech startup Lawhive acquired a U.Okay.-based legislation agency. With these acquisitions, AI startups wish to mix their AI instruments with the prevailing area experience and shopper service capabilities of companies companies.

Prezent desires to construct extra partnerships and purchase appropriate corporations in sectors like govt communication teaching, medical writing, and consulting companies within the communication space.

Mark Terbeek, a accomplice at Greycroft who has invested in a number of rounds in Prezent, mentioned that the enterprise agency likes to search out the areas the place companies have used pricey companies previously to satisfy a necessity, and now there are AI instruments out there making an attempt to do the identical duties.

“We felt that Rajat and Prezent were concentrating hard on solving specific customer needs of business communications. Plus, we saw software evolve quickly to adjust to the workflows of end users and help them save time,” he informed TechCrunch over a name.

Going ahead, Prezent desires so as to add higher personalization to its product so the AI device learns the type of every particular person within the group. It additionally desires so as to add multimodality capabilities to deck creations, permitting customers to make use of textual content, voice, or video as enter to make displays. Like Synthesia and D-ID, Prezent desires so as to add digital avatars to displays, too.