VideoVerse acquires AI-based design firm Optikka

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based video solutions provider VideoVerse has acquired design company Optikka. This acquisition will add to ViderVerse’s media, design, and publishing capabilities within its content automation platform Magnifi.ai. It is expected to advance the computer vision based platform to help customers transform thousands of asset into fully designed, consumer-ready highlights and narrative-based packages.

VideoVerse will now onboard Charles Duncan, Optikka’s founder and creative technologist, and Nick Arciero, a global creative strategist. In the past, Duncan has worked with Star Wars, ESPN, and Disney Parks & Resorts, and Arciero has experience building media pipelines and infrastructure across Disney+ and the company’s global streaming services. To be sure, Optikka was started to create images for the visually impaired, but has evolved to become a  post-production compositing engine for AI-based graphic design that accelerated with bot integrations (GPT), which Duncan (himself a colour-blind person) calls Bot-able design systems.

“My initial focus was on helping companies produce rasterized, visual accessibility, and it unlocked the ability to talk to AI generators artistically,” explains Duncan, who is color-blind. “With no-code and low-code toolsets, our tech can transform how commercial content owners and broadcasters create fully branded, internet-breaking content for their audiences in real-time. Through code-as-design capabilities at the pixel level, Optikka allows creators to fully unleash their creativity.” Optikka works across video, broadcast, XR, and metaverse platforms and will adapt to future formats.

Before Optikka, VideoVerse acquired Esports AI-based content creation company Reely.ai in April this year. This acquisition will help VideoVerse better serving customers in the gaming and e-sports sector, where there is growing demand for AI-driven content creation and distribution. VideoVerse is backed by investors like Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and 9Unicorns Accelerator Fund. In April 2022, the video editing firm raised $46.8 million in Series B funding.