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 discuss with customers — for about $27 million. Kaltura introduced at the moment 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 offered his first startup, Voca, to Snap in 2020 — and CTO Eylon Shoshan, eSelf brings deep technical experience in speech-to-video era, 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 a part of Kaltura to supervise the mixing of eSelf’s expertise into the corporate, with all present eSelf staff approaching board as effectively.

The 2-year-old startup has a small however sturdy workforce of round 15 AI consultants, 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 laptop imaginative and prescient, saying it was a “very main firm within the space of conversational speech bots. And so he’s an professional [in this field], and that’s what we purchased,” Yekutiel stated.

Kaltura affords a set of cloud-based software program options designed for superior video functions, together with a company video portal akin to a non-public YouTube, instruments for webinars and digital occasions, and integrations that embed video studying into college studying administration methods, or platforms that manage 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 clients, serving to them interact customers throughout gross sales, advertising and marketing, buyer care, schooling, and leisure. Its shoppers embody tech giants like Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and IBM, in addition to main banks, insurance coverage corporations, consulting corporations, 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 pay attention, communicate, and interpret person screens in actual time.

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

Why a video firm is betting on conversational avatars

For the previous twenty 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 personalised 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 stated.

Kaltura is evolving from a video platform right into a video-based buyer and worker expertise supplier, the place video serves because the interface. In contrast to most avatar corporations that provide solely a “face,” it delivers the complete 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 and marketing, buyer help, and coaching. Goal sectors embody schooling, media and telecom, e-commerce, monetary companies, healthcare, and prescribed drugs.

Requested about media stories 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 spread of corporations, together with potential “acquisitions, mergers with equally sized corporations, and connections with some bigger gamers.” However it by no means acquired near a transaction like those being reported, he stated. 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 up to now. The corporate acquired cloud TV answer 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, stories round $180 million in income, is worthwhile on an adjusted EBITDA and money movement foundation, and has about 600 staff.