Kaltura, an AI video platform company headquartered in New York, will acquire eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup that develops interactive avatars (AI-generated digital humans that can converse with users) for approximately $27 million. Kaltura today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eSelf, a platform with support for more than 30 languages and a user-friendly studio for creating, customizing, and deploying photorealistic digital avatars.
eSelf was co-founded in 2023 by CEO Alan Bekker and CTO Eylon Shoshan, who sold their first startup Voca to Snap in 2020. eSelf brings deep technical expertise in audio-video generation, low-latency speech recognition, and screen understanding that allows avatars to see and react to what’s on a user’s screen. eSelf’s co-founders will join Kaltura to oversee the integration of eSelf’s technology into the company, along with all of eSelf’s current employees.
Kaltura co-founder and CEO Ron Yekutiel told TechCrunch that the two-year-old startup has a small but strong team of about 15 AI experts. He noted that Becker’s previous company specialized in natural language processing and computer vision, which help computers understand human speech, and said the company was “a very strong player in the conversational speechbot space. That’s why he was an expert[in this field]and that’s why we acquired him.”
Kaltura offers a suite of cloud-based software solutions designed for advanced video applications, including a private YouTube-like corporate video portal, tools for webinars and virtual events, and integrations that bring video learning into university learning management systems and platforms for organizing online coursework.
The Nasdaq-listed company also offers virtual classroom products and end-to-end TV streaming solutions. Kaltura’s video platform serves more than 800 enterprise customers and helps them engage with users across sales, marketing, customer care, education and entertainment. Customers include major technology companies such as Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and IBM, as well as major U.S. banks, insurance companies, consulting firms, pharmaceutical companies, and universities.
Kaltura plans to integrate eSelf.ai’s virtual agent technology across its video offerings. The purpose of this integration is to allow agents to listen, speak, and interpret the user’s screen in real time.
“This acquisition was very strategic. We were actively evaluating multiple companies to find the right one. We determined that they (eSelf) were best-in-class not only in video-on-demand lip sync, but real-time synchronous conversations, and had an excellent speech-to-speech and text-to-speech technology stack,” Yekutiel said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Beyond technology, there is also strong cultural and geographic alignment, which was very important to us.”
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Why video companies are betting on conversational avatars
For the past 20 years, businesses have primarily used video to stream, upload, and manage content. But that is changing rapidly. Thanks to AI, we can now generate hyper-personalized and contextual videos on the fly, giving every viewer a unique and custom experience tailored to exactly what they need in that moment, Yekutiel explained.
“We started with video, then moved to personalized video, and now, using eSelf’s technology, we are adding human-like features (face, eyes, mouth, ears) to make our AI agents conversational and expressive,” Yekutiel said.
Kaltura is evolving from a video platform to a video-based customer and employee experience provider where video serves as the interface. Unlike most avatar companies that only provide a “face”, we provide a complete workflow including avatars, intelligence, and knowledge related to your company. The focus isn’t just on streaming video. The CEO added that this is delivering tangible results and ROI.
The company plans to launch standalone embeddable agents for sales, marketing, customer support, training, and other applications. Sectors covered include education, media and communications, e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and more.
Asked about media reports that Kaltura is considering a sale or merger at a valuation of $400 million to $500 million, Yekutiel told TechCrunch that Kaltura is exploring opportunities with a variety of companies, including potential “acquisitions, mergers with similarly sized companies, and connections with some of the larger companies.” But he said the deal never came close to what was being reported. He also pointed to recent acquisitions, including Cultura’s fourth company, as evidence of the company’s continued commitment to its current strategy.
This is Kaltura’s fourth acquisition to date. The company 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 $4.5 million announced in December 2024.
Cultura, which went public in 2021, reports revenue of approximately $180 million, is profitable on an adjusted EBITDA and cash flow basis, and has approximately 600 employees.
