Prezent, a startup that provides an AI-powered presentation builder for enterprises, has raised thirty million dollars in a new funding round. The investment was led by Multiplier Capital, Greycroft, and Nomura Strategic Ventures. Existing investors, including Emergent Ventures, WestWave Capital, and Alumni Ventures, also participated.
Based in Los Altos, California, the startup is now valued at four hundred million dollars. To date, the company has raised over seventy-four million dollars. It intends to use the new capital primarily for acquisitions.
The company has also announced its first acquisition, purchasing Prezentium, a services-led presentation company operating in the life sciences sector. In an unusual arrangement, Prezent founder Rajat Mishra was one of the co-founders of Prezentium. Mishra stated that since starting his new startup, he has served as the non-operating president of Prezentium. The two startups already had a relationship, with Prezent using Prezentium as a go-to-market partner. This acquisition brings both ventures under one roof, allowing Prezent to leverage Prezentium’s client base to offer its own AI suite to more customers.
Many companies are developing AI-powered presentation tools, including Presentations.ai, Lica, Gamma, and Chronicle. Notably, all these companies have Accel as a backer. While most focus on consumers and small business users, Prezent is committed to an enterprise strategy targeting larger corporations. The company previously stated it wants to expand into different verticals like finance and manufacturing. However, Mishra noted that for now, the company will focus on serving clients in the life sciences and tech industries.
Mishra said there are many tools that try to make presentations pretty, but Prezent aims to provide the best tools for business communications. He believes presentation is one of the last frontiers in business that is not yet automated. The goal is to help data scientists and designers communicate effectively with this automation.
Mishra, a former McKinsey employee, explained that the company takes a specialized approach by training AI models for presentations specific to each industry. Prezent places a presentation engineer, who is familiar with the industry and the startup’s offerings, inside enterprises. This helps employees get used to building presentations with AI tools. Mishra stated that while AI can do many things, it cannot teach people how to use AI, which is why they deploy presentation engineers to help customers adopt the product faster.
AI startups are increasingly acquiring services companies to take advantage of existing customer bases and provide better customization for enterprise clients. For example, digital avatar startup D-ID acquired Berlin-based video startup Simpleshow, and Google-backed legal tech startup Lawhive acquired a UK-based law firm. Through these acquisitions, AI startups aim to combine their AI tools with the domain expertise and client service capabilities of services firms. Prezent wants to build more partnerships and acquire suitable companies in sectors like executive communication coaching, medical writing, and consulting firms in the communication area.
Mark Terbeek, a partner at Greycroft who has invested in multiple rounds in Prezent, said the venture firm likes to find areas where businesses have historically used costly agencies. Now, AI tools are emerging to perform those same tasks. He stated that Rajat and Prezent were concentrating hard on solving specific customer needs for business communications. He also noted that the software evolved quickly to adjust to user workflows and help them save time.
Looking ahead, Prezent aims to add better personalization to its product so the AI tool learns the style of each individual in an organization. It also plans to add multimodality capabilities to deck creation, allowing users to employ text, voice, or video as input to make presentations. Similar to Synthesia and D-ID, Prezent intends to add digital avatars to presentations as well.