Tavus, a generative AI video research startup, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to introduce the future of personalized digital engagement. The funding round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Rory O’Driscoll joining the company’s board of directors. Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, HubSpot, and others also participated in the round. The funds will be used to continue accelerating product and model development, as well as expand sales in enterprise and mid-market.
Co-founded by Hassaan Raza and Quinn Favret in 2020, the company's mission is to revolutionize digital engagement by making hyper-personalized video accessible to businesses of all sizes. Tavus initially raised $6.1 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital in October 2023, with participation from Y Combinator, Accel, Lightspeed Ventures, and others.
The Tavus platform allows users to record a single video and, with just a few clicks, generate thousands of personalized versions tailored to each member of their audience. By cloning the face and voice of the user, Tavus creates ultra-realistic videos with HD lip-syncing and voice cloning, eliminating the need for manual recording. This technology has broad applications across sales, marketing, customer success, recruiting, and other functions where personalized engagement is crucial.
"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," said Rory O'Driscoll, Partner at Scale Venture Partners. "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."
The San Francisco-based company also announced the beta launch of the Tavus Developer Platform, which makes its proprietary models accessible via APIs to product teams looking to leverage AI to build novel engagement experiences across sales, marketing, and online learning. The first available Replica API utilizes Tavus’ new Phoenix model, which powers digital replica and text-to-video generation capabilities. This gives end-users the ability to rapidly create authentic videos of themselves on any topic, with only a script and no recording or studio production.
Competitors like HeyGen and Synthesia offer similar tech, however, Tavus is the only platform that offers developers end-to-end models and APIs of this quality for generative talking-head videos. The company says several more APIs are coming soon, including Lip Syncing API, Dubbing API, and Video Campaign API. Tavus is built with privacy and security always front-of-mind, employing a suite of safety checks including voice identification and matching consent with training data to ensure that only you can create a replica of yourself and hold the keys to your likeness.
Tavus has already seen significant adoption from a diverse range of users, including sales teams, university deans, and C-level executives. Flagship customers have reported up to a 10x increase in engagement, 5x jumps in click-through rates, and 8x increases in conversions after implementing Tavus videos in their go-to-market strategies.
"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," said Hassaan Raza, Co-founder and CEO of Tavus. "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."
Looking ahead, Tavus believes that generative AI videos will become the norm in content creation and consumption, with every piece of content being curated and personalized for individual users. As video continues to dominate as the preferred medium for consuming content, Tavus is well-positioned to lead the way in immersive, hyper-contextual video experiences that drive engagement and foster personal connections in the digital world.