Synthesia more than tripled its spending in 2023 as the race to secure market share for GenAI startups targeting enterprise customers rages on.
The UK-based company — which uses generative AI models to let businesses automatically create videos for company training, internal comms and marketing purposes — saw administrative expenses rise from £13m in 2022 to £47.7m in 2023, according to its latest company accounts.
A big portion of that was down to increasing staff costs, which rose from £10.8m in 2022 to £23m in 2023. Average monthly headcount grew from 78 to 198.
Turnover increased from £8.6m in 2022 to £25.7m in 2023, as did losses, which rose from £4.5m to £23.5m after tax.
Synthesia was one of just seven European startups to become a unicorn in 2023, hitting the billion dollar valuation after raising a $90m Series C in June last year.
That round took the startup’s total funding to $157m, with a cap table including Accel, Kleiner Perkins, Seedcamp and Air Street Capital.
Gobbling up market share
Founded in 2017, Synthesia has been building products using GenAI since before ChatGPT-triggered the AI boom.
While the continent's best-funded GenAI startups have been scrambling to find paying users as they look to justify eye-watering funding rounds and valuations — and, in the case of Aleph Alpha, pivoting to do that — Synthesia says it has more than 50k customers.
That includes the likes of Amazon, Ocado and Johnson & Johnson, and in the UK the NHS has used it to make explanatory videos in different languages.
While the company started out as a spinout from University College London — and was one of the fastest-growing spinouts in Europe in the past 12 months — it’s overseas sales that brought in the most turnover in 2023.
Globally, excluding Europe, Synthesia made £16.1m last year — more than three times the £5m brought in in 2022. In the UK turnover rose from £1m to £3m and in the rest of Europe it rose from £2.6m to £6.6m.
The company is up against a crop of new startups that are using GenAI to develop similar video products for enterprises — including Colossyan, HeyGen and Speechify.
Synthesia cofounder and CEO Victor Riparbelli Rasmussen was one of hundreds of founder signatories on a letter urging the government to rethink raising capital gains tax in the UK earlier this week, ahead of the country’s budget at the end of October.
