Enterprise AI presentation tools are becoming the new hot spot that investors are chasing. Startup Prezent, which provides AI-powered presentation builders for enterprises, announced today that it has raised $30 million, led by Multiplier Capital, Greycroft, and Nomura Strategic Ventures, with participation from existing investors Emergent Ventures, WestWave Capital, and Alumni Ventures.
The startup, based in Los Altos, California, currently has a valuation of $400 million and has raised over $74 million in total funding to date. The company plans to use the new funds primarily for acquisitions.
Prezent also completed its first acquisition, buying Prezentium, a service-oriented presentation company focused on the life sciences vertical, founded by Deepti Juturu. Interestingly, Prezent's founder Rajat Mishra was one of the co-founders of Prezentium. Mishra revealed that since founding the new company, he has been serving as the non-executive chairman of Prezentium. The two startups had already established a collaboration, with Prezent using Prezentium as a market expansion partner. This acquisition essentially merged Mishra's two companies, allowing Prezent to leverage Prezentium's customer base to offer its AI suite to more clients.
Many companies are trying to create AI-driven presentation building tools, including Presentations.ai, Lica, Gamma, and Chronicle. Notably, all of these companies have Accel as an investor. While most focus on consumer and small business users, Prezent focuses on enterprise strategy, targeting large corporations. Previously, the company expressed its desire to expand its product into different verticals, including finance and manufacturing. However, Mishra pointed out that the company currently wants to focus on serving customers in the life sciences and technology industries.
Mishra told TechCrunch that there are many tools trying to make presentations look good, but they want to provide the best tools for business communication. He believes that presentations are one of the frontiers in enterprises that have not yet been automated, and they hope to help data scientists and designers communicate effectively through this automation.
Mishra, who previously worked at McKinsey, said the company is taking a specialized approach, training AI models for each specific industry to create presentations.
Prezent will deploy presentation engineers within enterprises who are familiar with the industry and the company's products, helping different people within the company get used to using AI tools to build presentations.
Mishra said that the reality of AI in enterprises is that while AI can do a lot, it cannot teach people how to use AI. That is why they deploy presentation engineers within companies to help customers adopt the product faster.
AI startups are seeking to acquire service companies to leverage existing customer bases and provide better customized services to enterprise clients. Digital avatar startup D-ID acquired Berlin-based video startup Simpleshow, and Google-backed legal tech startup Lawhive acquired a UK law firm. Through these acquisitions, AI startups aim to combine their AI tools with the existing domain expertise and customer service capabilities of service companies.
Prezent hopes to establish more partnerships and acquire suitable companies in industries such as executive communication training, medical writing, and consulting in the communication field.
Mark Terbeek, a partner at Greycroft, has invested in Prezent in multiple rounds. He said that his venture capital firm likes to find areas where enterprises previously used expensive agencies to meet their needs, but now AI tools can accomplish the same tasks.
He told TechCrunch on the phone that they believe Rajat and Prezent are focusing on addressing specific customer needs in business communication. Additionally, they see software rapidly evolving to adapt to end users' workflows and help them save time.
Looking ahead, Prezent hopes to add better personalization features to its product, allowing AI tools to learn the style of each person in the organization. The company also wants to add multimodal features for creating slides, allowing users to use text, voice, or video as input to create presentations. Like Synthesia and D-ID, Prezent also wants to add digital avatars to presentations.
The competition around enterprise AI tools is accelerating. Unlike consumer-facing tools, the enterprise market requires deeper industry understanding and stronger service capabilities. Prezent is trying to find a differentiation advantage in this crowded space by acquiring service companies and deploying professional engineers. With the combination of a McKinsey-style precise approach and AI technological innovation, whether this company can truly change the way enterprises communicate is worth watching closely.
