In a significant financial development, Benchmark has committed $60 million to the AI video startup HeyGen, which now boasts a valuation of $440 million, The Information reports. This investment reflects a remarkable growth for HeyGen, whose value has skyrocketed to six times what it was just four months prior.
HeyGen’s latest funding round has not yet closed and it is led by Benchmark, which is an early-stage venture capital firm that has previously invested in Uber and Snap.
HeyGen is only a three-year-old startup and it specializes in generating avatars and voices to create videos using generative AI, similar to several other startup rivals. The startup was originally called Surreal and was initiated in China but is now based in the US in Los Angeles. HeyGen’s early backing came from Chinese investors including HongShan, which was previously called Sequoia Capital China, and ZhenFund.
The Information has revealed that the startup’s annual revenue has surged to over $20 million, marking a significant leap from $1 million just a year earlier. HeyGen, which focuses on serving business clients, is in competition with other players in the AI video startup arena, including Synthesia and Runway.
HeyGen’s Chinese roots put the startup in an unfavorable position with the US government, which is increasingly concerned about Chinese technology operating on American ground. The US government has also been working to get TikTok banned in the US unless it is acquired by an American company. As a result, HeyGen is now trying to distance itself from its original Chinese investors.
As for TikTok, one of its interested buyers in the US includes Activision Blizzard’s former CEO, Bobby Kotick, who is reportedly looking to partner with OpenAI’s Sam Altman to purchase TikTok’s American operations.
TikTok is owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, which has been accused time and time again of using its highly popular social media app to steal data from customers in the US. This caused the US government to ban the use of TikTok on all devices owned by government officials and it is now looking to remove the app entirely from the country. The app has previously been banned in other countries including India.
