Rajat Mishra and Deepti Juturu.
In a strategic move that consolidates its position in the field of artificial intelligence-assisted business communication, startup Prezent AI has announced a US$30 million Series B round of funding. This capital injection brings the company’s valuation to US$400 million, moving it closer to becoming the industry’s first unicorn.
The round was led by funds Multiplier Capital, Greycroft and Nomura Strategic Ventures, and includes participation from existing investors Emergent Ventures, WestWave Capital and Alumni Ventures, among others.
The round coincides with the first acquisition made by the Los Altos, California-based company: the purchase of Prezentium, a services company specializing in creating presentations for the life sciences sector.
As explained by Rajat Mishra, founder and CEO of Prezent AI, this acquisition is the kickoff of a bold strategy of growth through buyouts. The stated goal is to use the new capital primarily for this purpose, seeking partners in areas such as executive communication training, medical writing and communication consulting firms.
“The customer cares about results, not products. Not just a few slides, but excellent business communication. While service firms have traditionally delivered these outcomes, AI makes a new reality possible,” Mishra said.
“Our lodestar is to provide experts when they are needed and AI acceleration everywhere. In this way, we deliver the result of great business communication: faster, better and cheaper.”
A growing industry
The market for AI tools for creating presentations is becoming increasingly crowded, with players such as Presentations, Gamma and Chronicle all backed by Accel. However, Prezent AI has decided to mark its territory by focusing exclusively on the enterprise customer, in contrast to the consumer and small business strategy of its competitors.
Unlike generic AI tools, Prezent AI models are trained specifically for each industry, understanding its unique language, regulations and particular needs. This approach has enabled them to demonstrate tangible ROI for Fortune 2000 companies in the technology and life sciences sectors.
“The reality of AI in the enterprise is that while AI can do a lot of things, it can’t teach people how to use AI. That’s why we want to place presentation engineers in enterprises to help our customers adopt the product faster,” Mishra explained.
The integration of Prezentium is the first practical step in this direction. Deepti Juturu, founder and CEO of Prezentium, commented: “We have been business partners for a while and share the same customer obsession. With Prezent AI’s AI expertise, we can leverage our flagship service ‘Overnight Presentations’ and introduce new AI-enabled services.”
Ash Vaidya, Managing Director at Multiplier Capital, said, “Prezent stands out as a category-defining company operating at the intersection of AI, communication and business productivity. We invest in high-growth businesses that deliver critical solutions, and Prezent’s platform, combined with its bold acquisition strategy, has the potential to reshape the way businesses communicate at scale.”
Mark Terbeek, a partner at Greycroft, which has invested in several rounds of Prezent, added that his firm looks for areas where companies have used expensive agencies in the past to fill a need, and where AI tools now exist that attempt to perform the same tasks.
Expansion plans
Going forward, Prezent AI plans to incorporate more advanced personalization so that the tool learns the style of each user within an organization. It also intends to add multimodal capabilities, allowing users to employ text, voice or video as input to create presentations, and like companies such as Synthesia, explore the integration of digital avatars.
With this round of funding and its first acquisition, Prezent AI not only consolidates financially, but is poised to become the first unicorn in the enterprise communication space, unifying human experts and artificial intelligence acceleration into a single platform destined to transform the way large corporations communicate.
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