AI now enables users to turn video captured on a phone into much more professional outputs
dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
The global AI video generation market continues to accelerate. Grand View Research reckons it was worth $555 million in 2023 but that by 2030, it will be close to $1.96 billion. That equates to 20% growth a year.
However, while the competition in this new market is stiff, with fast-growing businesses such as Runway, Invideo and Synthesia offering tools that make it easy for anyone to generate professional looking video for social media or consumer marketing, say, US start-up Trupeer thinks one sub-sector has been overlooked.
The company, founded in San Francisco last year by Shivali Goyal and Pritish Gupta, is today announcing a $3 million funding round. “We’ve built Trupeer so that anyone, from IT leads to customer success reps, can turn a quick recording into a polished video that’s useful, searchable and scalable,” says Goyal, who is the CEO of the company.
Trupeer is betting that there’s a large market for AI-generated video that goes beyond the slick content that marketers and creators are now generating to target consumers. “We think every professional in the business wants to make video,” says Goyal. “But there isn’t anything out there that makes it easy and cost-effective for them to do it.”
Think of the IT team rolling out a new piece of software across the business – a how-to-use-it video could be a quick way to tell colleagues how to adopt it. Imagine a product development team that is constantly designing new features – a demo video for the sales team can show them what to sell to customers. Or consider learning and development teams, which are constantly thinking about how to engage colleagues – video training content could be the answer.
Trupeer says its platform makes it possible for anyone in one of those teams to produce their own videos without assistance from colleagues elsewhere in the business or at third-party provider. They make a rough recording of themselves on screen – via a familiar tool such as Zoom, say – and then upload the video to Trupeer. It turns the recording into a polished product incorporating voiceovers, avatars, graphics and any other features the creator wants.
Critically, says Goyal, Trupeer’s platform can produce videos that look high-quality, but also provides support with the content of the video – for example, it will edit the presenter’s original recording so that the final version is more articulate and compelling. And once the video is finished, it’s possible to make additional versions of it – in different languages for colleagues in other countries, say, or personalised for particular recipients.
It’s a simple idea that appears to be getting a great deal of traction. Trupeer was only launched last December but has already signed up around 10,000 users, ranging from small start-ups to a number of large enterprises. Global drinks giant Diageo has used the tool, for example. So has Amazon.
“We initially got Trupeer just for training our teams on software, but it quickly spread to seven or eight functions within the company,” says Karthik Chakkarapani, senior vice president at Zoura, another early adopter. “Each of them are finding their own use cases for the tool.”
“It’s been a real word-of-mouth success story,” says Goyal. “Often, one person in an organisation has started using us and then mentioned it to colleagues, or someone seeing their video has asked how they made it.”
That sense of momentum has also caught the attention of investors. Today’s seed funding round is led by RTP Global and Salesforce Ventures with participation from a group of more than 40 angel investors, including CIOs and CTOs.
“Trupeer is reimagining content creation by making what was once complex, costly, and manual, instant and scalable; from onboarding to support and training videos, they’re making high-quality product content accessible in minutes”, says Madhur Makkar, principal at RTP Global. “They’re clearly building something that resonates with a passionate customer base.”
The seed round gives Trupeer additional financial firepower for further product development, as well as to build a more formal go-to-market operation. “Our ambition is global,” says Goyal. “We think this product deserves to be in businesses all around the world.”