Synthesia CEO on turning down a $3bn acquisition offer and instead raising at a $4bn valuation - Scaling Europe

Synthesia's $4 Billion Raise and GV's Investment Rationale Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show presented by Deal. I'm Seb Johnson, and today I'm joined by none other than Victor Rappelli of Synthesia that has just announced a $200 million series EA whopping $4 billion valuation. Congratulations. Thank you. Must have been a quiet end to the year for you. No brilliant sense. So the round's been led by Google Ventures, an existing venture, an existing investor in the company. What gave them the conviction to to double down even more? Speaker 2 I think when you look at the business, right, I think one of the things that that definitely stands out is the quality of revenue that that I think we're driving. There's lots of AI companies that are growing very fast, lots of top line revenue, which is which is also right. But I think if you when you really go in and you kind of examinate how much of an experimental revenue and how much of its real revenue and how much of it is really high quality revenue. I think at that last category, I think we I think we spike out quite a lot. We spent a long time building, but I but I think it's a, it's a very, very good enterprise business plus 140% and are and work with almost all of the Fortune 100. And I think those are the things that really like stands out. And of course, the sort of, you know, and the input to that is the fact that I think, you know, we build a product that very genuinely, truly delivers a lot of value to people, not just cool demos and what ifs and big dreams. And I think we have those as well. I just, that's an important part, I think of of partnering with customers today. But I think the core product, right is, is just delivering a ton of value. And I think that's very obvious in the metrics. Speaker 1 And do you think looking back that the winners of this kind of era are going to be AI companies like yourselves that who still have those SAS metrics? Speaker 2 It's, it's a good question, right? Like I did this clearly like a new shape of company that emerges with every new wave of technology. And I, I don't think we're at the point yet, but we really know what like what is a, a truly, truly AI native company looks like some people think it's going to be defined by like just being 5 people building a bill and dollar company. Other people think it's going to be defined by other things. I don't think we know that yet. I think we're probably one of those companies like we were kind of started in the SAS era, we took off in the SAS era. And so there's a lot of ways of how the product companies build, which is I guess you could say kind of come from that time. I think we're innovating a lot. But I think right now, I think SAS metrics are still important, right? I think it's basically like think that quality of revenue, maybe NR will be. I actually think NR will be the right metric, even in five or ten years. Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah. I mean it's, it's the metric, it's becoming increasingly important. As you mentioned, there's so many high growth AI companies that are not sticky by their nature. I also want to touch on one of your new investors, Evantic. Matt Miller's Evantic Fund: New Investor Value Evantic, the new fund, Matt Miller, ex Sequoia partner, he's one of the new investors that is coming on. What is Evantic bringing to the table that I guess Synthesia didn't have before? Yeah. Speaker 2 So I think Matt has done an excellent job of really bringing together the European startup community in a way that that we just hadn't really before. And for me, I think it's, it's all about the people. And I think what what Matt has done really well is, is actually to create a forum. So it's, you know, even before Evan Seek invested, you know, me and Stefan were both part of of the community, which he calls the Legends community, which really is a community that's very active of like the best people in Europe across founders, operators, investors and so on and so forth. I really admire like how quickly he's actually managed to build that and that's big leverage on the business. So I think outside of access to those people, of course, a lot of them we know, I think with Evan Seek, we kind of solidifying that the way he operates the fund, right is that he actually gives our carry to legends that help other founders in the portfolio, which I think is a very interesting twist on the traditional adventure model that incentivizes more collaboration than the usual LP base of an investor, right, who've invested in the fund. It'll help, but they can, but it's not like it's not really the same model. So I think that's, that's something I, I admire a lot. And I think that's, you know, looking at him as an entrepreneur, having known him now for like a copy or I think it's just a very impressive and we're super happy to have him. Speaker 1 On board, yeah, a super interesting model. I've heard that because he has a big community of legends that they can just mobilize this group of people to fight on his Inivantics case to try and get into a round which is just like a yeah, it's a really interesting taking that. Speaker 2 And I think if you look at the track record so far, the companies he's gotten into, very impressive for a fund that's like barely a year old. Speaker 1 Yes, all the big names of the last 6-9 months, all the big rounds he's managed to get into. Speaker 2 And even for us, like, you know, we know everyone in the community already, but I think we received 40 messages at least from like no tier one people to saying, hey, like take. Speaker 1 Take that's what I had about another company as well, that it's like you do just get bombarded by all these amazing people in Europe being like, take his money. Exactly. Speaker 2 I don't think I've had 10% of that. Like I have of course, received messages from people I admire like, hey, you work with this fund, but like this scale that that there's he's immobilizing is is impressive. I think that talks a lot to the power of the community. Creating Cash Millionaires: Synthesia's Secondary Sale Absolutely. And one of the things that was also part of this round is a secondary sale which we love to see. I know this is not the first one that Cyndisia has done. Can you talk about how much liquidity that you kind of enabled? Speaker 2 We're not public about that, but it's it's, it's a pretty significant, significant number. And I think it's something that just makes me and Stephman, the rest of the founders, like incredibly proud. One thing you really need in ecosystem right, is liquidity to employees. You want that money to go back into the system. You want it, it makes it more attractive to work in start-ups because all of a sudden people, you know, I, I always used to say in, in Europe, nobody knows anyone who made any money of working in a startup in Europe. So in the US, everybody knows someone who made $1,000,000 by being early somewhere. And we need more of those stories to both inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. We need those stories to inspire people to want to work in startup land. We need this to, you know, help bring more agent investors to the table. So I'm really proud that we're able to do that. And I think it's super cool that not just us, but you know, 11 labs and many of other big companies, there's been becoming like a common thing to, to, to do this as. Speaker 1 Well, and part of this round, have you seen or have you made any, any of the employees cash millionaires? Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess we have I. Speaker 1 Love it. That's amazing. Speaker 2 I think if you look at the the at that, you know how many views we've been operating. I grew. We've made a lot of millionaires. Speaker 1 For sure, on paper, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing to see that realise in cash because you're right. I mean, those people go on to become Angel investors and they reinvest it and give them financial security to start their own one day. What's the atmosphere been like in Sandija? I know that you told the company before Christmas. What's it been like since then? What was the reaction like? Speaker 2 I mean, I think the reaction is is great and as as it happens with these things like things kind of leaked a little bit beforehand. So it wasn't like a total surprise when people found out. But these are big milestones for our company. I think it's big milestones, but the company, of course it it, it signals, you know, investor confidence and and it validates that we're doing a good job. It has the secondary component to it as well, which on an individual level is something people celebrate and and are very happy about. So I think it's, it's a great end to the year. But of course, it's like, you know, there's no time to rest on the law. I think everybody in Enthusia knows that we're killing it, But you know, there's there's lots of competition. It's a market that's going incredibly fast and you know the game is the battle is not is not won yet, although it's. Synthesia's Revenue, Growth Strategy, and Essential AI Skills Anything that you can share about current revenue AR anything like that? Speaker 2 Not public around that, but we just shared last year when we crossed 100, we're obviously going to you know blow past 200 this year. And I think, you know, if you look at at the raise and the valuation, I think it's it, it speaks to the obviously, you know, really, really good growth rate. So we're very happy about. Speaker 1 And now you're you've kind of hit Series E, This is technically, I guess, late stage. How are you thinking about balancing growth and profitability? Are you thinking about profitability at all or are you still thinking, you know, we've got this sort of war chest, we're just going to double down on growth? Speaker 2 Much more doubling down on growth. I think, you know, we're one of the AI companies that actually have like really good margins and really good unit economics, which is a great position to be in. I think if we didn't have that, I would probably begin to think more about that at this stage of the company. But because we have that, I think we're very confident just like topping down on growth, right? Speaker 1 As you're confident that when the time's right, you'll be able to flip on that profitability switch and start generating cash. Speaker 2 We can decide to invest more or less in growth, but we have a very solid business that underpins it. If the business had like 10% margins, because every single dollar we make 90% of it goes to to model layer providers, I would probably start thinking more about like how do I make that number better? Because it's going to be very hard to. And that's, that's more like a fundamental thing in the in the business, right. But right now we're definitely just all in a growth. Speaker 1 And growth was huge in 2025, right? It seemed like a real take off year for Synthesia. What would you say was one of the key drivers that kind of unlocked that growth for you? Speaker 2 So I, I think we have this, we're having this journal mantra called utility of a novelty, which is something we've been talking about for many years. But at it's core is really just about, you know, we're building technology that's very cool, has a high wow factor and all the things is great. It helps, you know, gather interest. It helps people, you know, help with marketing, helps with a lot of things, which is awesome. But it's very important not to lose sight of just building cool things. But that doesn't actually drive value. So for the last, you know, four or five years, we've been very focused on not getting lost in cool demos, but actually building a lot of value for our customers. And of course the AI models is a very important part of that. But I think when you look at why we've succeeded so much and why we've really won the enterprise, a lot of it is actually the non AI things we've built. We've built across the value chain. We have the AI models, which is kind of where it starts. We generate pixels and videos. We build an editor, a video editor, right, where you can do the non AI things you want to add in, like a screen recording, put some text, do some animations. We build our content management system, a collaboration platform, a translation product, a video player where people can publish their videos with interactive elements like buttons. And all these things together creates A workflow. And it's that workflow that people buy and it's that workflow that's better than anyone else, right? And when I say workflow, what I mean is like you have an idea, you want to make a video, that process, we have an idea for a video until it's delivered to an end consumer. We've really optimized that process, whereas a lot of other companies maybe have focused a lot on just the AI models, but just the editing part of it, right? And I'm not saying that's wrong, but I think for the kind of customers we have, the kind of use cases we have, the speed of getting through that workflow is really important, right? And that's not just AI models, that's also building enterprise readiness, SSO, admin logs, all these things that that that enables to these is to be rolled out across the enterprise. So I think that's one thing you've done right. Speaker 1 Yes, the classic sad stuff, right as anything. I yeah, there's a question I wanted to ask also about, you know, one of the things that you've spoken about is the cost of content creation coming down to zero. And we're seeing the rise of AI make it more and more accessible because it's sort of like linked to that process that you're talking about, as we see the cost come down, as we see accessibility kind of open up. And Borden, what do you think is the key human skill that's going to become increasingly important for making great content? Speaker 2 Yeah, today, right. I think there's still like some gap in, in, in getting to like the, the final like quality of video that, that you imagine. But I think once we're past that, which I think we will be pretty soon, but basically you'll have like a video editor that's you can chat to and can, you know, probably bring whatever idea you have to life. And I think it's going to be a lot about the taste, which is a very diffuse thing. I still think, you know, people who are great at video will have much better taste than people who are not good at video today. But it will be about like, how long should this video be? How do I make it funny? If it's maybe it's a serious topic, but you wanted to land really well, so you make it a little bit more funny, right? Like all those things, which I think today makes for great. You know, video creators will still be relevant. The production process will be a lot easier. But I, you know, I tend to always think, of course, AI already today and in the future will mean that it'll be way more content on the Internet because everyone can create. But there's already a lot of content on YouTube. There's already a lot of content on TikTok, right? A lot of people that make video, but it is only 1% of those videos that get any views. And that is mostly because those people understand how to tell a story in a compelling way, how to stand out from the rest. Synthesia's Product Roadmap and Future Strategic Decisions And so on. Yeah, got it. OK, the last time we spoke, you said, and I quote, Synthesia is ripping. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 How are you gonna ensure that you continue to RIP in 2026? Speaker 2 So we have the core product which is ripping, which is great. And the big thing for us now is launching our next product, which we're calling Skills, and it's kind of our first foray into truly AI native video. Today, what we've been doing is video as you know it, but made with AI. So it's still a static video you play from A to B. And this new product, right, is essentially video you can talk to that can mean a lot of different things. The first product we're launching is around skills and training specifically for sales teams. And So what this means is that you go from, you know, we work with companies like Zoom, for example, on training their sales team, keeping them enabled. I guess so much that happens in the world of of as a software seller, like your competitors launch new products, you change your own pricing policy and you get a new CRO in with a different methodology for how you go to market. Like this stuff happens in a business all the time, right? And so it's very important to keep your everyone in the company and specifically your sales team up to date. Other problems existed for a long time and a lot of our customers today, we help with that just through making short bite size video content. Now what we're able to do is saying instead of just making sure you watch the video, we can actually make sure if you've understood the content or not. So you watch a 510 minute video and then you can add in an agent at the end of that video that can, for example, pretend to be a customer. Then you role play and as a sales person, you have to then overcome objections and, you know, explain why your product is better than a competitive's product. And the agent is of course intelligent using LLM so it can figure out like where you're weak. They can ask more questions there. And they can actually then also give you after feedback on, you know, what are you good at? What are you less good at? Which of course very helpful for you and you can practice as much as you want, but it also begins to create a data set for the CRO and the managers of like how well do people actually understand our product, which is data that doesn't really exist today, exists in the minds of sales managers who'll know their own team. But this begins to give you like an actual dashboard saying, OK, our team is really strong on the core product and why that's good. But our team is not very strong on why, you know, Synthesia is better than competitor X or not very good at like opening lines, like whatever is you go in and you define with this product and that could be anything you want in your business. So that's an entirely new data set and it's entirely new value proposition to some extent, right? And so the way we're gonna continue ripping and get to a billion dollars of AR is by expanding the product suite. And this is really about going from purely selling communication to actually selling what kind of outcomes in a sense, like someone watching a video is, is of course, like is an outcome, but I can't prove you've changed your behavior because you've watched the video, Right. But with this, we actually can begin to show behavior improvements. And then that's a very different value proposition, right? Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's very back and forth, right? It's very back and forth the dynamics. Speaker 2 Exactly right. And these agents, you know you can. This is one example of how you can use them. That's the first thing we're launching. It could also be they can just ask the agent a question if you're in doubt about the content that that's also very valuable in in many instances in the future. I think, you know, we'll be doing things like recruiting where, you know, you can have kind of an A video agent that can interview a candidate on the spot, give them a case study alongside with explaining them what the job is and the roles is. There's gonna be a lot of of use cases where you can combine like, you know, static video as we know today with these agents that can hold a conversation with someone for information intake, giving them a life, you know, case study, doing role plays with them. Like there's so many, there's so many use cases you can you can use this. And where we want to play is just for the experiences, agent experience that require like a visual component. That's where Cynthesia can come in and play and. Speaker 1 When you're looking at things like building the skills for sales or going to recruitment, how are you deciding what to build? Speaker 2 A lot of it comes from our customer base. I think historically Cynthesia has always been around enterprise knowledge, information sharing, not like storytelling and content as much. And so when I look at our customer base and when I talk to our customers, it's very clear that, you know, when I ask them, what are you trying to do with the videos you're creating, right? That's like, well, we're trying to ensure that our sales team is enabled to sell our new product and whatever. And that's great. We're helping them with that today. This is just a natural extension of that really, right? So it's about listing the customers and helping them solve the actual problem that they're trying to solve. Like today, we can take a part of that problem, but if we can solve the entire problem for them, that's very valuable and, and, and that's what what they want as well. Speaker 1 And, you know, you've been valued at $4 billion. Now you've mentioned the ambitioning sketch. A billion dollars there are. How big do you think Synthesia can get? Speaker 2 I think there's $100 billion outcome that's definitely possible requires, you know, of course a lot of of great execution. But I think there's no doubt the world is moving into visual first communication. Like we're seeing that everywhere video is, is, is taking over almost everything that we do everywhere into a world where agents is going to be the probably the primary way we interact with most types of products. And so far, right? And the combination of those two things, we can play a really, really big role. And if you want to create an agent experience that is visual 1st. And by the, by these, I don't just mean avatars that that you talk to that will be a component of it. This is about much more than that, right? It's about showing you relevant images. It's about drawing a graph of whatever you're talking about or a table, something like that. That's a space where I think we have a we, we can play a really big role. So I think the the potential outcome from here I think is is is really, really. Speaker 1 Big, it's still massive. And I also wanted to touch on the the acquisition rumours at the end of the last year. So there's rumours that Adobe wanted to to purchase and feature for 3 billion met was even interested. Why did you say no? Speaker 2 Well, can't discuss rumours unfortunately, but you know, we just raised the new funding round, so we're very excited about that path. Speaker 1 And the ambition is to just to to go your own and to to build $100 billion company. Speaker 2 I mean, we think the opportunity is, is, is, is massive, right? And, and we're very excited about that, that path forward. Victor's Optimism and Critique on the Future of European Tech Interesting. One of the things I was really admired about you is your stance on Europe. So you are very optimistic, you're bullish on Europe, you want to see Europe and European tech succeed, but you're also very critical in a constructive way. You've mentioned that you, you do really want to see European tech succeed. It's one of the reasons why you're HQ D here in London is you want to prove that it can be done almost. Do you ever feel any tension between wanting what's best for Europe, which is, you know, having great companies scale and grow headquartered here versus what's best for Synthesia, which may be moving headquarters to America one day or or being based somewhere else? Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, look, I think I care deeply about the European mission and I wanted to succeed here, but it's not at all cost, right? So, but that's something we always evaluate. But I truly think from where we are right now, as I've said many times, I think there's a lot of pros of being in Europe. I don't think it's spoken about enough especially to being which I would probably say that we are probably like a top 5% company in Europe. I'd like there's a lot of great talent Europe that that is easier to to acquire that isn't in the Bay Area, for example. But I mean it's not at all cost, right. I think as, and as you know, I am critical of of Europe. I think I think we're seeing ultimately what matters is like, are we building great companies? And I think it's, it's very hard to ignore a lot of the success stars we're seeing right now, right? Like there's a lot of great companies being built in Europe. The ecosystem I think is. Is is coming together. I think, you know, I mean your rise and and the work that you do I think is very important. We talked about Matt Miller before really collecting the European equals. I think there are lots of great things that is happening and you know, yeah, I think, I think what is best for some easier is to be in Europe today. Speaker 1 Nice. That's amazing to hear, right. I think that's counted to the narrative that we often hear. You mentioned some of the issues around Europe and we saw today EU wink, looks like it's going to go ahead. The President of Europe has mentioned, you know, that she's bullish on it. What would you fix in Europe? If you could wave the magic wand and fix one thing, what would it be? Whether it's late stage capital, capital markets, whatever, what would it be? Yeah. Speaker 2 I mean, ultimately I think, which is very hard to fix, but I think everything is downstream from culture and I think what we are lacking in in Europe is a culture that celebrates ambition. Dr. Innovation, most of the money in Europe is owned by old families who made their money 100 years ago. And I kind of out of this like rent seeking behavior. And I think changing that is very difficult, but I think it is slowly kind of happening a little bit in in certain circles, right? And I think that's really important because ultimately the generation that's growing up right now, the new generation of entrepreneurs, the new generation of people that work in companies, like we want those people to, to bring that out and be, it's OK to be ambitious, OK to be driven and you can do it from Europe. I think that mindset is, is really important. Interesting. They also think that a lot of the tension we see in Europe now, right? Like 5 or 10 years ago in Europe, people felt invincible, right? We have the best countries in the world, the best social systems. Why the heck would we care about innovation or blah, blah. Now, what we're seeing is Europe is under pressure, you know, like we're under pressure geopolitically from all different angles right now. And that actually requires us to focus on the things that matters, right? We value independence. We value economical growth that we're not dependent on our allies to, to, to, to maintain our standards of living. And I think that very naturally actually means that we kind of focus a bit less on saving the rest of the world and all these things. I think it's been a European project for a very long time to actually like we need to put on our own oxygen mask 1st and then we can, we can we can chase some of these other projects that I feel like it's been taking way too much ad time the last 10 years. So I think that is changing. Then I think on a more practical level, I think things like how much pension funds invest in VC funds, for example, is a very easy fix that we definitely should do. I think governments and the EU should just put budget aside to work with European AI companies. I think that's a very simple, again, thing to do. I think those are probably like the most important ones. Yeah, I've also talked about like the stock market and IPO in Europe. I think it's still challenged around that. Maybe that's getting better, but yeah, I think I think everything is down to you from culture, and that's actually the thing I hope is changing the most and I do think we are moving in the right direction. Speaker 1 There I think so as well. I hear so many more people who now are coming out of university who want to go straight into tech as opposed to banking or or consulting, which I think is great to say. Speaker 2 And I feel like I meet a lot of people who, who, who want to ensure the, the, the future of Europe, right? Which I think in, in a way just has like 10 years ago, no one was thinking about the future of Europe, right? It's. Speaker 1 Taking for granted. Speaker 2 Right. Taking for granted, I think now we're seeing, I mean, investing in, in defense companies 5-10 years ago, right? Absolutely. Like no VC fund would ever do that. But now it's this thing of like, well, it's not like an imaginary threat. It's actually, it's real. It's real, right? So I think as much as I wish that all those Jubilee contingents did not exist, I think it does have like a positive effect in some sense. Speaker 1 As a company headquartered here in London, but with so many clients in the US, do the political tensions worry you at all? Speaker 2 Not really. I think. I think, you know, business goes on and I, I, I don't sense there's any. Speaker 1 They risk the business from. Speaker 2 Any risk to the business there so? Navigating IPO Decisions, Talent Acquisition, and AI Culture You, you talk about capital markets, right, Your Series E again, like I said, it's kind of late stage. Are you thinking about an IPO at some point in the in the next couple of years, five years, 10 years? Yeah. What are your thoughts? Speaker 2 Not something we're thinking about right now. Obviously the stage of the company means that it's something, you know, that begins to become about the ability. But right now I think we're, we're just very focused on building the best business that we can. And I mean, as we've, you know, seen across lots of other companies, like there's lots of liquidity in the private markets. And so kind of to some extent begs the question of like, why do you want IPO? When you IPO right, you're going to be able to wear a different set of standards. You're going to be evaluated by investors that think very differently than a lot of private investors world. So I wouldn't say that's something we. Speaker 1 You're pursuing. Speaker 2 Not something. Speaker 1 We're databricks. Did the series Ki think last year? Speaker 2 Revolute, right, like 70, five, $80 billion now. Never, never. And I think there is a very good question to be asked, like, what is it you gain from going public, right. A company like Revolut or would probably have been hindered in many ways by going public. Yeah, because you, you just it's, it's harder to make hard decisions, right? Speaker 1 Yeah. What's the biggest constraint that you're facing currently? Is it talent, distribution or something else? Speaker 2 I think talent is always like the, the, the hard thing. As I've said before, I think in Europe there's lots of great talent. I think in all honesty, where it becomes harder is like as a late stage company, you begin to need to hire people who've kind of seen software companies, high growth operate at scale with a very kind of high bar for, for quality. And in Europe, we just don't have that many companies and thus not that many people. So one of the challenges is like finding those executives, our leaders and working with them. And, you know, I think what we have seen is like, we've been very fortunate to actually find great people in the US who've been willing to move to the, to the UK. But obviously the pool there is smaller than if you're in the Bay Area where everyone is even in, I mean, the Bay Area is clearly the best place in the world for, for this kind of talent. New York is, is like mightily better than Europe, but there is definitely like a gap there. But I, I said, I think, I think we feel it more in like senior roles. I think in, in kind of like, you know, the majority of the roles that, that we're hiring for here. I think Europe has great people. Speaker 1 As you grow and expand, you're obviously an AI company selling to enterprises. How are you looking to build a culture like an AI native culture with instant data as you grow and scale? Speaker 2 So obviously, I mean, we use AI as much as we can. And I think we're in in, in some sense in a great position because we have a workforce of like highly motivated, driven people who also generally pretty young and picks up new tools very easily. So I love seeing all the ways people are using, I mean, GP, TS and AI. Some of the things, you know, we, I don't think I have anything that's like fundamental new, but things like prototyping with AI as opposed to, you know, writing long documents. I think clearly is something that's great. I think it's something we're getting better and better at in the way we do a lot of, you know, sales call preparation. There's so many magical things we could do with LMS there understanding, you know, our business and what our customers are doing with the product. I guess there's a lot of like small things I I love seeing when you know anyone just comes up with ideas and and does it. Speaker 1 Very. Yeah. Finds hacky ways of using it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Victor's Contrarian Views on AI's Impact on Content Creation When you started, you know, you had strong beliefs about AI and content, which I imagine everybody disagreed with you on, right. It was not, You know, you're very going against the grain, very contrarian in your views around content and AI. Now those views are becoming mainstream. What views do you hold today about AI and content that you think people still push back on today that you think will be proven right over time? Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's kind of a weird feeling now that's actually happening, but also very cool. Speaker 1 Is it relief? Is it do you get gratification from that of being proved right over time? It's. Speaker 2 Definitely like a driving thing for me, always has been, I think. Like, I always like being contrarian, and because being contracted feels especially really nice when you're actually right. Speaker 1 Yeah, I have. Speaker 2 That so yeah, this is good. I think, I think one of the, I think probably what I feel like it's not really mainstream yet because it hasn't happened yet, is I think a lot of people expect that AI content is going to look like non AI content, just that the production of it is going to be done with AI, right? So I think a lot of people still think of it as like, we got to be making Hollywood films that's like 90 minutes long with AI. Or we're going to have like computer games that where the the AI is like much more intelligent than what it is today when you're playing against it. Or we're going to have like artists that release albums on Spotify that's made with AI and we all can listen to it. And some of that of course, is going to be correct. But I think what always happens a bit to us, what we're doing in an enterprise context, right, is that when we create new technologies, we always end up making new formats that are different than the original ones. And I always explained this with music because it's something that's very close to me, right? But when people invented drum machines, for example, very early on, they did it because they want to replace drummers. It's much easier to have a drum machine than to have a tight drum set if you're playing live somewhere. The quality of those drums were not very good, so they ended up not really being used for that. But then, like, people picked them up and it started making like house and techno music, which has to be played so fast that a real drummer couldn't do it. And there was something nice about the sounds. That kind of work, right? And then a new genre was invented. I think we're going to see the same thing, like when we talk about like AI video. Like I think I don't think we're going to see like Hollywood. Hollywood I think is going to be the last ones to adopt AI video. I think what we are going to be seeing is like 5-10 minutes short films made by random YouTube creators. And it's going to be I mean, I don't know exactly what it's going to be like, but I imagine it's going to be like some like a new shine like vlogging, right? Vlogging didn't exist until everyone had cameras on their phones because now you could actually block your everyday life. And so this is probably going to be some emulgation of like different shine was coming together and someone will figure out what's the format that just works right, so. Speaker 1 It's going to be the rise of a whole new type of content and format on media that's going to be, yeah, created by the AI. Speaker 2 Yeah, and I think a lot of this stuff is the problem. There's probably going to be a new version of like it's going to be a YouTube ish kind of platform where people share these things because they're probably not going to be completely linear in the way that video is today. Twitch is another good example of this, right, where when people invented like real time streaming technology, if you ask the McKinsey consultants, it's like, oh, we're going to have like a gazillion news stations, right? People are going to be setting up news stations at home. They're going to stream it around. No one had would have guessed that the billion dollar use case initially was watching other people play computer games. But there was just a bunch of things in that that really made sense. Like when you watch someone play a computer game, if you know the computer game, you have all the context already, right? So you can drop in and out of a stream and easily understand everything that's going on. Obviously people play computer games very online, but it's like it's very hard to predict. Speaker 1 Yeah, you wouldn't have guessed you would. Speaker 2 Have guessed it right, but but people take the technology and then they take around they use it in in in like interesting and and weird ways. And I think with AI that's still to be still to be figured out exactly what, what that looks like. Speaker 1 Yeah, we yet to see that type of format happen exactly. It's. Speaker 2 Kind of what we're trying to do, right, like with this new product, it's, it's like, what does video look like when it's AI native? And one of the things is like, well, if you can talk to it and it can generate itself in real time, both with the avatar talking to you, but also with graphics, it's like it becomes something different, right? The way I think about it is actually maybe it becomes more like a Zoom call, you know, like a Zoom call, you have someone talking to you and generally speaking, we have like some slides and you can take the, the conversation like any direction that you want. Maybe that's what we're moving towards, where interacting with these videos feels more like you're on a on a Zoom call with an AI that can both talk to you, but it can also like show you relevant content and to collect information from. So that's why I think it's like a really fun creative challenge to figure this. Speaker 1 Out, yeah, and I think it's just about getting the tools into the hands of people who play around with it. Favorite AI Tool, Investments, and AI Job Scepticism Well, look, I haven't got much time. I want to finish on some quick fire questions. So number one, what is your own personal favorite AI tool that you use to in your day-to-day life? Speaker 2 I really like granola. I think granola is great. I think the heck they did of like not having to invite a bot to your meeting, but just recording the sound on the computer. It just makes it like very easy. And I like the fact that you can kind of chat with your notes in a very simple way to think about how to pick one. I would probably pick ChatGPT because that's probably the one I use the most, but that's a bit of a boring answer and I think Banola. Speaker 1 Is that is great, yeah. Over time, do you see LMS moving towards open source or closed source? Speaker 2 I think we will see that most companies are going to use close source models because it's just going to be easier and lower effort. There will definitely be use cases for open source models. And I think what we're seeing, I think we'll continue to see open source like catching up. But I think you need to have a very good reason to, to, to host your own open source watch, which I think is not like we should look at databases today, right? And I don't think a good enough reason is just like, oh, we don't trust a third party to run our LLM for us. I think that's every company in the world trusts Amazon or Microsoft or Google to host like the absolute most sensitive data and obviously it's going to be true for the limbs today as well. Speaker 1 As well. Got it. As a founder, do you prefer selling, building, or even raising? Speaker 2 Building for sure. Speaker 1 Building and then selling and then raising. Speaker 2 I'll probably say building, bracing and selling because my Co founder Stefan is the is the seller of the two of us. I also like selling but I don't enjoy the sport as much as I think he do. He does, and other people. Speaker 1 Got it. OK. If today you had to start an entire new business from scratch, what would you build or what kind of and what remote or category would you be building in? Speaker 2 I think Brain Computer interfaces is at a really interesting point where the technology is like somewhat kind of starting to work, but the use cases are still not really clear. I like that. I think it's an interesting space right now where I think there's like, it's kind of good enough you can begin to experiment. And I would love to figure out like what is the first interesting use case that has actual value to that probably be like my my immediate answer. Speaker 1 And I give you £10,000,000 today to invest in either a private or public tech company. Where are you investing in? Why? Speaker 2 I just invested in in Fuse. Oh yeah, Which I think is gonna be a monster company. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's amazing. Speaker 2 Alan is an amazing founder. I have lots of other great investments I would love to double down on, but that's a reason one for me in public companies. I've been long nuclear for many, many years. I have a pretty big position in a company called OCLO, which has a bit of like meme tendencies, but I'm a big believer in in the nuclear fusion being the way forward, which also kind of a bit like what I think energy in general is going to be a very interesting space in the years to come. And yeah, I think nuclear is, is very interesting. There's also obviously a bunch of other like tech stocks, but I think in general I prefer to my own portfolio. I weighed against like, you know, stuff that just like needs to return 5-6 percent a year. And what what interests me more on a personal level is, is more kind of like investing in in growth opportunities. I think nuclear is and energy is a big one. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's coming back in fashion as well, right. It's a hot topic in Europe as as energy resilience comes back. Final question, what are you seeing or kind of what beliefs or trends are you seeing in AI today that you're sceptical about? Speaker 2 Does some comments take a very strong stance at this idea that like AIS is going to replace all jobs? And I'm not sure what that looks like for those people. If it's like, you know, company like Synthesia is driven by like 25 people, just like using lots of agents. I understand a lot of that. I think of course a lot of that is going to be true, but I still think that a 500 person company with really great people who are really awesome at using agents can do more than a ten person company managing a whole bunch of agents. And I think not just because I think that just like logically makes sense, but I also think I think tech people have a tendency to underestimate how much this human aspect of doing business matters. I'd like of course you need to build the best product, but the power of like a great sales for the power of partnering with your customers, I think will matter for a long time to come on 100 year time scale. Maybe not, but I, I, I tend to think that a lot of companies talk about how much they, a lot of the big AI companies, right? Everyone talks about like replacing people, the customers points are up, but they're all the companies that are hiring like by far the most people, including ourselves. So I, I still think humans would be a really important. I think humans ultimately, I think for the foreseeable future, right, I still think is the most important component of of any company. I don't think that's going. Speaker 1 To go away. Yeah, I agree. You know, we always hear about the the one person Unicorn and I I agree. I always think that like if you can do it with one person, somebody else will do it better with 50 people or 100 people. Well, Victor, thank you so much for joining me. It's been great and congratulations again. Thank you.