SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pictory Corp., an AI-powered video solution that empowers content creators and marketers to edit and produce videos automatically and at scale, today announced a $2.1 million seed round led by FUSE alongside participation from Voyager Capital. Also participating in the round are prominent Seattle angel investors Bill Bryant, Omri Bahat, Bharat Shyam, among others. This investment, Pictory’s first external financing, will help the company aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts as well as accelerate product development.
The Seed financing follows a recent trend of impressive growth trajectory with the addition of 5000+ new customers reflecting 100x growth in 3 months. These new customers have been a combination of entrepreneurs who are part of the rapidly growing creator economy where over 2 million people make a full-time living as content creators, as well as marketers at companies across various industries. Video is a critical consideration for these creative entrepreneurs and marketers, yet video editing and production remains a big pain point as it is expensive, time-consuming, and requires specialized skills. Pictory’s AI-powered cloud video solution specifically solves these pain points as it empowers anyone with no video background to easily achieve the following:
- Convert webinars and long videos into short video snippets
- Edit videos using text as easily as editing a document
- Add captions to videos automatically
- Create videos from blogs, articles, and scripts
“Pictory’s AI-powered automation is a game changer for content creators and marketers as they can repurpose existing long-form content such as webinars, podcasts, and blogs into several short videos for social media within minutes,” said Vikram Chalana, CEO of Pictory. "We are very excited to partner with FUSE in our hyper-growth journey. The investment and their network will help us a build and expand a global community of video content marketers. The investment will also help us significantly improve our AI algorithms in video production, enhancing the time-to-value for our community," he added.
"Short form video is becoming an industry norm for many business use-cases, particularly in marketing and social media. With Pictory, the average user has enterprise-ready video editing and publishing tools at their fingertips," said Kellan Carter, General Partner at FUSE. “Pictory is led by a world-class team who have successfully built and scaled software companies before. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of the Pictory journey.”
With this round of funding, Pictory will further accelerate its AI-powered innovation to handle various video use cases such as extracting key messages from long-form video and text content, searching for the best visual to accompany a social post, selecting the best music track to pair with the video, text-to-speech rendering, transcribing a video, create video highlights, and more.
Learn more about Pictory and get a free no-obligation trial at www.pictory.ai.
About FUSE
FUSE is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in Pacific Northwest-based companies that are reinventing the modern economy with software. FUSE is committed to supporting the next generation of B2B technology entrepreneurs building category-defining businesses of lasting value. General Partners Kellan Carter, Cameron Borumand and Brendan Wales are joined by Venture Partner and Seattle Seahawks captain Bobby Wagner, as well as Senior Operating Partners John Connors and Satbir Khanuja. Their strategic LP base includes current and former executives at the Pacific Northwest’s top companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Starbucks, Costco, T-Mobile, Boeing, Avalara, DocuSign, Smartsheet and many more. For more information about FUSE, please visit fuse.vc.
About Voyager Capital
Since 1997, Voyager Capital has focused on first-round venture investments to help entrepreneurs in the Pacific Northwest create winning businesses. Built on the team's extensive experience with startups and its exceptional network across the industry, the firm's entrepreneur-centric approach accelerates the pace at which companies can build, execute, pivot and scale. Voyager has $520M under management investing in B2B software, cloud infrastructure, and applications driven by AI and machine learning. With offices in Seattle, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, BC, Voyager provides its portfolio the unwavering support and stage-appropriate connections needed to disrupt markets and create sustainable competitive advantage.
About Pictory
Pictory is an AI-powered video solution that empowers content creators and marketers to edit and produce engaging videos automatically in minutes and at scale. Over 5000 customers globally utilize the power of Pictory to create video highlights, edit videos using text, add captions to videos, repurpose existing long-form content such as webinars, podcasts, blogs into social snippets. Pictory was founded in 2019 by Vikram Chalana, Abid Mohammed, and Vishal Chalana with many years of marketing and technology experience and is backed by world-class investors and a team of strategic advisors from the industry. Learn more at pictory.ai.
