Kaltura, a New York-headquartered AI video platform company, is acquiring eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup behind conversational avatars. These avatars are AI-generated digital humans that can talk with users. The acquisition is valued at approximately 27 million dollars.
Kaltura announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eSelf. The eSelf platform supports more than 30 languages and features a user-friendly studio for creating, customizing, and deploying photorealistic digital avatars.
The startup was co-founded in 2023 by CEO Alan Bekker and CTO Eylon Shoshan. Bekker previously sold his first startup, Voca, to Snap in 2020. eSelf brings deep technical expertise in speech-to-video generation, low-latency speech recognition, and screen understanding. This screen understanding allows avatars to see and respond to what is on a user’s screen. The eSelf co-founders will join Kaltura to oversee the integration of its technology, and all current eSelf employees will come on board as well.
The two-year-old startup has a small but strong team of around 15 AI experts. Ron Yekutiel, co-founder and CEO of Kaltura, noted that Bekker’s former company specialized in natural language processing and computer vision. He described it as a very leading company in the area of conversational speech bots, and that they were acquiring Bekker’s expertise in this field.
Kaltura offers a suite of cloud-based software solutions for advanced video applications. This includes a corporate video portal similar to a private YouTube, tools for webinars and virtual events, and integrations that embed video learning into university learning management systems. The Nasdaq-listed company also delivers virtual classroom products and end-to-end TV streaming solutions.
Kaltura’s video platform serves over 800 enterprise customers, helping them engage users across sales, marketing, customer care, education, and entertainment. Its clients include tech giants like Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and IBM, as well as leading banks, insurance companies, consulting firms, pharmaceutical companies, and universities in the United States.
Kaltura plans to integrate eSelf.ai’s virtual agent technology across its video offerings. This integration aims to enable agents that can listen, speak, and interpret user screens in real time.
The CEO described the acquisition as highly strategic. The company was actively evaluating multiple companies and determined that eSelf was best-in-class for real-time, synchronous conversation, not just video-on-demand lip-syncing. He also highlighted their impressive speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology stack. Beyond the technology, there was a strong cultural and geographic alignment, which was critical.
For the past two decades, businesses have mostly used video for streaming, uploading, and managing content. But that is changing fast. Thanks to AI, videos can now be generated instantly, hyper-personalized and contextual, giving every viewer their own custom experience tailored to their immediate needs.
Kaltura started with video, then moved to personalized video, and now, with eSelf’s technology, it is adding human-like capabilities like faces, eyes, mouths, and ears to make its AI agents conversational and expressive. The company is evolving from a video platform into a video-based customer and employee experience provider, where video serves as the interface.
Unlike most avatar companies that offer only a face, Kaltura delivers the full workflow, including the avatar, intelligence, and enterprise-connected knowledge. The focus is not just on streaming video but on driving measurable business results and return on investment.
The company plans to launch standalone, embeddable agents for uses including sales, marketing, customer support, and training. Target sectors include education, media and telecom, e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.
When asked about media reports suggesting Kaltura was exploring a sale or merger at a valuation between 400 million and 500 million dollars, the CEO stated that Kaltura has explored opportunities with a range of companies. This included potential acquisitions, mergers with similarly sized firms, and connections with larger players. However, he clarified that it never got close to a transaction like the ones being reported. He pointed to Kaltura’s recent acquisitions, including this fourth company, as evidence of the company’s continued commitment to its current strategy.
This acquisition of eSelf marks Kaltura’s fourth acquisition to date. The company previously acquired cloud TV solution Tvinci in 2014, followed by Rapt Media in 2018, and video conferencing platform Newrow in 2020.
eSelf’s most recent funding round was its 4.5 million dollar round announced in December 2024. Kaltura, which went public in 2021, reports around 180 million dollars in revenue. The company is profitable on an adjusted EBITDA and cash flow basis and has approximately 600 employees.