Kaltura acquires eSelf, based by creator of Snap’s AI, in $27M deal

Kaltura, a New York-headquartered AI video platform firm, is buying eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup behind conversational avatars — AI-generated digital people that may speak with customers — for about $27 million. Kaltura introduced in the present day that it has signed a definitive settlement to accumulate eSelf, a platform supporting greater than 30 languages and that includes a user-friendly studio for creating, customizing, and deploying photorealistic digital avatars.

Co-founded in 2023 by CEO Alan Bekker, who beforehand bought his first startup, Voca, to Snap in 2020 — and CTO Eylon Shoshan, eSelf brings deep technical experience in speech-to-video technology, low-latency speech recognition, and display screen understanding, which permits avatars to see and reply to what’s on a person’s display screen. The eSelf co-founders will be part of Kaltura to supervise the mixing of eSelf’s expertise into the corporate, with all present eSelf staff approaching board as nicely.

The 2-year-old startup has a small however robust crew of round 15 AI specialists, Ron Yekutiel, co-founder and CEO of Kaltura, instructed TechCrunch. He famous that Bekker’s former firm specialised in pure language processing, which helps computer systems perceive human speech, and pc imaginative and prescient, saying it was a “very main firm within the space of conversational speech bots. And so he’s an skilled [in this field], and that’s what we purchased,” Yekutiel mentioned.

Kaltura provides a collection of cloud-based software program options designed for superior video purposes, together with a company video portal akin to a personal YouTube, instruments for webinars and digital occasions, and integrations that embed video studying into college studying administration methods, or platforms that set up on-line coursework.

The Nasdaq-listed firm additionally delivers digital classroom merchandise and end-to-end TV streaming options. Kaltura’s video platform serves over 800 enterprise prospects, serving to them have interaction customers throughout gross sales, advertising, buyer care, training, and leisure. Its shoppers embody tech giants like Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and IBM, in addition to main banks, insurance coverage corporations, consulting companies, pharmaceutical corporations, and universities within the U.S.

Kaltura plans to combine eSelf.ai’s digital agent expertise throughout its video choices; the mixing goals to allow brokers that may hear, communicate, and interpret person screens in actual time.

“This acquisition was so strategic. We had been actively evaluating a number of corporations to search out the suitable match. We decided that they [eSelf] had been best-in-class for real-time, synchronous dialog — not simply video-on-demand lip-syncing — and that they’d a formidable speech-to-text and text-to-speech expertise stack,” Yekutiel mentioned in an interview with TechCrunch.  “Past the expertise, there was additionally a robust cultural and geographic alignment, which was crucial for us.”

Why a video firm is betting on conversational avatars

For the previous 20 years, companies have largely used video for streaming, importing, and managing content material. However that’s altering quick. Due to AI, movies can now be generated immediately — hyper-personalized and contextual — giving each viewer their very own customized expertise, tailor-made precisely to what they want in that second, Yekutiel defined.

“We began with video, then moved to customized video, and now, with eSelf’s expertise, we’re including human-like capabilities — faces, eyes, mouths, ears — to make our AI brokers conversational and expressive,” Yekutiel mentioned.

Kaltura is evolving from a video platform right into a video-based buyer and worker expertise supplier, the place video serves because the interface. Not like most avatar corporations that provide solely a “face,” it delivers the total workflow—avatar, intelligence, and enterprise-connected information. The main target isn’t simply streaming video; it’s driving measurable enterprise outcomes and ROI, the CEO added.

The corporate plans to launch standalone, embeddable brokers for makes use of together with gross sales, advertising, buyer help, and coaching. Goal sectors embody training, media and telecom, e-commerce, monetary providers, healthcare, and prescription drugs.

Requested about media studies saying Kaltura was exploring a sale or merger at a $400 million to $500 million valuation, Yekutiel instructed TechCrunch that Kaltura has explored alternatives with a variety of corporations, together with potential “acquisitions, mergers with equally sized companies, and connections with some bigger gamers.” But it surely by no means obtained near a transaction like those being reported, he mentioned.  He additionally pointed to Kaltura’s latest acquisitions, together with its fourth firm, as proof of the corporate’s continued dedication to its present technique.

This marks Kaltura’s fourth acquisition thus far. The corporate acquired cloud TV resolution Tvinci in 2014, adopted by Rapt Media in 2018, and video conferencing platform Newrow in 2020. eSelf’s most up-to-date funding spherical was its $4.5 million introduced in December 2024. 

Kaltura, which went public in 2021, is round $180 million in income, worthwhile on an adjusted EBITDA and money circulation foundation, and has about 600 staff.