Leading generative AI video research company Tavus revealed that it raised $18 million in Series A funding late last year in a round led by Scale Venture Partners. Rory O’Driscoll joined the company’s board of directors. Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, HubSpot, and others also joined the round. The funding will accelerate the development of its products and models.
Tavus also announced the beta launch of the Tavus Developer Platform. This platform means the company’s proprietary models will be accessible via APIs to product teams looking to utilize AI to build novel engagement experiences in sales, marketing, and online learning.
The first available Replica API leverages Tavus’ breakthrough Phoenix model, which drives digital replica and text-to-video generation capabilities. And it allows end-users to quickly create authentic videos of themselves on any topic, with only a script and no recording/studio production.
With the funding, Tavus plans to expand sales in enterprise and mid-market, with demand for its SaaS application coming from a wide range of use cases in banking, real estate, automotive, and health care.
Tavus pioneered generative AI video back in 2020, initially driving industry breakthroughs in large-scale personalized video campaigns with lip-syncing and audio blending techniques. Now, the Tavus team is moving its technology beyond existing capabilities by releasing its advanced Phoenix model.
Phoenix generates realistic talking head videos with natural face movements and expressions accurately synchronized with the input. This novel approach bypasses traditional methods and constructs dynamic and three-dimensional facial scenes utilizing neural radiance fields (NeRFs).
Tavus is the only platform that provides developers with end-to-end models and APIs of this quality for generative talking-head videos. And the first API to be released is its Replica API in Beta. Available now, this API enables photo-realistic digital replicas and text-to-video generation.
There are several more APIs are coming soon, including:
1.) Lip Syncing API – In-place or full lip syncing.
2.) Dubbing API – Translation and dubbing with seamless lip-syncing.
3.) Video Campaign API – Video orchestration for scaled personalized video generation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Companies need to meet customers where they are, and today’s customers are consuming video. To make it engaging, it has to feel personal, and to make it scalable, it needs to be automated. The team at Tavus, led by co-founders with a strong vision, has made this possible and we’re excited to partner with them as they put the technology in developers’ hands to create personalized video experiences with generative AI.”
- Rory Driscoll, Partner at Scale Venture Partners
“As we’ve been refining our product and advancing our models, we’ve received requests for API access from a broad spectrum of developers, from emerging startups to industry giants. We’ve always been committed to quality research, and we see limitless potential for our technology’s application. We’re thrilled to open the doors to our cutting-edge models, empowering developers to craft the next wave of captivating video experiences.”
- Hassaan Raza, Co-founder and CEO of Tavus
