The first seven months of Synthesia were reportedly paid for with Bitcoin profits. That is the line Victor Riparbelli has used, in interviews summarised online, to explain how a company with no revenue stayed alive.
He grew up in Denmark, a boy drawn to science fiction. He studied computer science and business informatics at the IT University of Copenhagen, and a semester at Stanford made him want to start something. He says he was around startups for nearly a decade before Synthesia. Then he moved to London, attracted by its ecosystem of virtual reality companies.
In an interview summary, one investor round followed a cold email to Mark Cuban, who agreed to put in $1M after a long email exchange.
The idea arrived through a person. He met Matthias Niessner, a researcher in AI video, and the two founded the company in 2017 with Steffen Tjerrild and Lourdes Agapito. The first pitch was dubbing and translation, so that a film or advert could appear in any language with the actor's lips matching. A 2018 demo on the BBC's Click got attention. Customers were slower. For about two years the team was around ten people and, as Wikipedia puts it, struggled with sales. Riparbelli has called the early years 'kind of horrible'.
Cash came in small pieces: $3.1M in 2019, $12.5M in 2021, $50M that December. In an interview summary, one investor round followed a cold email to Mark Cuban, who agreed to put in $1M after a long email exchange. That detail is unverified.
The turn was a change of customer. Around 2021, enquiries from big companies pushed Synthesia away from entertainment and towards training videos. Instead of hiring cameras and actors, a firm could type a script. Riparbelli describes a rule of 'utility over novelty', dropping projects built just to impress.
The price was trust. A 2023 Freedom House report said governments used the tools to make propaganda, and the actor Dan Dewhirst found his likeness in Venezuelan videos. Synthesia now says it requires consent and screens new users.
In October 2025 it raised $200M at a $4bn valuation, with revenue past $100M, and said it served most of the Fortune 100. It reportedly turned down a $3B offer from Adobe in April 2025.
For first-time founders: the product that paid for the early months was a side bet, but the one that made the company was a customer who asked. Listen to who keeps calling.