Munich startup Beyond Presence is leading a new wave of computer vision applications with its breakthrough hyper-realistic avatar technology. The company uses advanced smartphone technology and artificial intelligence to create avatars that look and sound like real people and can be used for real-time conversations. The editor of Downcodes will give you an in-depth understanding of the development history and future prospects of this company with unlimited potential.
Beyond Presence, an innovative startup from Munich, is ushering in a new era of computer vision applications. The company is developing a breakthrough hyper-realistic avatar technology by combining advanced smartphone technology and AI capabilities. This technology aims to create avatars that look and sound exactly like real people and can be used in real-time conversation scenarios.
Today, Beyond Presence announced that it has completed its first round of external financing, receiving US$3.1 million in pre-seed investment. HV Capital, a well-known German venture capital institution, led the investment, with 10x Founders, Alba VC and individual investors from Meta, DeepMind and Zalando also participating. This round of financing not only demonstrates investors’ confidence in Beyond Presence technology, but also provides strong support for the company’s rapid development.
Although Beyond Presence’s technology has yet to be officially released, company CEO and co-founder Awais Shafique told TechCrunch that they are close to the final goal. The new funding will be used to continue developing the company’s base model and support the launch of a public beta later this month.
Currently, about 300 companies are waiting to try Beyond Presence's products. The technology may first be used in areas such as customer service and support, recruiting, sales and online education. In these areas, companies are seeking to expand the scale of interactions with users without increasing labor costs.
Beyond Presence’s successful financing is inseparable from the rich experience of its founding team. Shafique previously co-founded computer vision startup Presize, which developed technology that can accurately measure a user's measurements for online clothing purchases simply by turning in front of a smartphone camera. Presize participated in the German version of the "Venture Investor" program in 2020 and received a record investment of 650,000 euros, which attracted widespread attention.
In April 2022, Meta acquired Presize. While the exact deal amount and date were not disclosed, there are indications that this was a sizable exit. TechCrunch has learned that the deal value could be in the low nine-figure range. Regardless, this exit is a huge win for Shafique and his co-founders, considering Presize had only raised a few million dollars before.
The core goal of Beyond Presence is to solve a complex computer vision problem. Unlike other digital avatar companies, Beyond Presence is dedicated to creating avatars that can be used in real time, look exactly like you, and can be used in unscripted conversational situations. This is the video version of a text chatbot.
Currently, Beyond Presence is focusing on developing the video component of the product. The sound part is powered by Eleven Labs, while content generation uses OpenAI’s GPT model. Enterprise customers have the flexibility to choose which model to use and can choose to use their own language model or speech agent.
It is worth mentioning that Beyond Presence was accepted by Y Combinator in the early stage, but ultimately chose to give up the opportunity of this prestigiuos incubator. Shafique and co-founder Felix Altenberger (CTO, former Presize deep learning expert) prefer to maintain the company’s autonomy and equity and focus on the development of core technology and basic models.
Beyond Presence’s innovative ideas and strong technical background have won it a place in the highly competitive AI vision field. With the public beta soon to be released, we can look forward to how this technology will change the way people interact with the digital world. The successful application of ultra-realistic avatar technology may bring revolutionary changes to remote work, online education, virtual reality and other fields.
Beyond Presence’s ultra-realistic avatar technology will undoubtedly bring new possibilities for human-computer interaction in the future, and its development deserves our continued attention. Looking forward to the surprises brought by its public beta version and the wide application of this technology in various fields.