In the fast-changing world of artificial intelligence, few names stand out as much as Victor Riparbelli, the co-founder and CEO of Synthesia. This London-based company has changed the way videos are made with its cutting-edge generative AI. Since it started in 2017, Synthesia has grown from a bold idea into a global leader in AI-powered video production. By 2025, it will be worth $2.1 billion and serve over 60% of Fortune 100 companies. Riparbelli’s story, from being a tech-savvy business owner in Copenhagen to being named one of TIME’s 2024 Most Influential People in AI, is a great example of ambition, resilience, and ethical leadership in the age of AI. This article goes into more detail about Riparbelli’s background, his key role in starting Synthesia, how the company has changed the way media is made, and his vision for the future of AI-driven communication.
Early Days: A Love for New Technologies
Victor Riparbelli’s story starts in Denmark, where he became interested in technology at a young age. Riparbelli called himself a sci-fi fan, and he was interested in the potential of new technologies. This interest would shape his career. His first attempts at making websites and doing digital marketing helped him develop an entrepreneurial mindset. He had already worked on projects in growth and product marketing by the time he was in his mid-20s. These projects included building products in different industries and running online marketing campaigns. His time at a Danish venture studio, where he worked with Steffen Tjerrild, who would later become a co-founder of Synthesia, helped him get better at spotting and acting on new ideas.
Riparbelli made a big decision in 2016 to move to London, which is a center for technology and new ideas. He worked as a consultant for the UK government and big businesses in the growing fields of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) while he was there. But a chance meeting with Professor Matthias Niessner, a computer vision researcher at Stanford, would change the course of his career. Riparbelli was very interested in Niessner’s groundbreaking work on AI-driven video generation, especially his “Face2Face” research paper. Riparbelli said in an interview, “When I first saw his research paper, I thought I saw magic.” “I saw the technology and thought, “This is going to change everything we know about making media.”
This moment of inspiration led to the creation of Synthesia. Riparbelli saw that AI could make video production more accessible to everyone, including businesses and individuals, without the need for expensive equipment, studios, or professional actors. His goal was to change the way media is made from one that relies on cameras and microphones to one that is driven by code and algorithms. This would allow millions of people to easily make high-quality video content.
Starting Synthesia: A Jump into the Dark
Riparbelli, Niessner, Professor Lourdes Agapito (a 3D computer vision expert from University College London), and Steffen Tjerrild started Synthesia in 2017. The company’s strong foundation came from the team’s different skills: Riparbelli’s entrepreneurial drive, Tjerrild’s business sense, and Niessner and Agapito’s academic skills. Their goal was big: to let anyone make professional-quality videos with AI, getting rid of the usual problems like cost, time, and technical know-how.
The first few months of Synthesia were very hard. Riparbelli has honestly said, “The first few years were pretty awful.” Everyone thought we were completely crazy because the technology didn’t really work. Most people didn’t know what “synthetic media” meant, and the idea of generative AI was still new. It was hard to get investors to put money into an AI-driven video startup run by a non-technical founder who didn’t have a traditional AI PhD or a resume with big tech names like Google on it. Riparbelli was turned down by almost 100 European venture capitalists because they didn’t believe in the technology or his credentials.
Riparbelli and his team relied on the academic knowledge of Niessner and Agapito to make their case more convincing. Their research in deep learning and computer vision was the technical basis for Synthesia’s platform. Even though they had a lot of problems, they kept going and it worked out. In 2019, Synthesia got $3.1 million in seed funding. Then, in April 2021, it got $12.5 million in a Series A round, and in December 2021, it got $50 million in a Series B round. Big investors like Kleiner Perkins and GV led these rounds. By June 2023, Synthesia had become a “unicorn” after raising $90 million in a Series C round led by Accel and backed by Nvidia. This made the company worth $1 billion. In January 2025, Synthesia raised $180 million in a Series D round, which doubled its value to $2.1 billion.
Synthesia’s Breakthrough: Changing the Way Videos Are Made
Synthesia’s main product is its AI-powered video generation platform, which lets people make professional videos from text inputs in more than 50 languages. The platform uses deep learning architectures made by Niessner and Agapito to make hyper-realistic AI avatars that copy how people talk, move, and make facial expressions. Users can choose from AI presenters that have already been made or make their own avatars using only a few minutes of webcam footage. These avatars can tell stories in videos, teach things, or even translate videos into several languages while keeping the speaker’s voice and style.
The platform can be used for a lot of things, like making training videos for businesses, customer support videos, and marketing content. Companies like Amazon, Reuters, Zoom, and Siemens have started using Synthesia to make their video production faster and cheaper. Siemens, for instance, has praised Synthesia for being able to deliver “high-quality, localized content with speed and precision.” The platform’s ability to work in multiple languages and integrate brands seamlessly has made it a game-changer for global businesses, allowing them to communicate well in a variety of markets.
In 2018, the BBC show Click featured Synthesia’s technology, which showed a digital version of presenter Matthew Amroliwala speaking Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi. This brought the technology to the public’s attention. In 2021, Synthesia teamed up with Lay’s to make the “Messi Messages” campaign, which let people make personalized videos with AI-generated avatars of soccer player Lionel Messi. This was another big campaign. These milestones showed that the platform could make video content that is interesting, scalable, and easy to find.
Leading with Integrity in the Age of Deepfakes
Riparbelli has been at the forefront of synthetic media for a long time, so he knows a lot about the moral problems that come with AI-generated content, especially the threat of deepfakes, which are videos that change or make up someone’s likeness for bad reasons. Synthesia has taken steps to deal with these worries ahead of time, putting ethical and responsible AI development first. The company needs clear permission to make AI avatars, and it uses both people and AI to check content for abuse, like hate speech or false information. In April 2024, Synthesia added better systems for finding misuse and started checking new users to make sure they don’t make avatars without permission.
Riparbelli has also spoken out strongly for fair AI regulation. In a blog post from 2024, he said that “the right regulation will help curtail misuse and incentivize companies to safeguard powerful technology” while making sure that AI tools are still available to everyone. He has stressed how important it is to teach people about AI so that more people can understand it. He thinks that if more people understand synthetic media, it will be harder for bad actors to use it to their advantage. When Synthesia became the first AI video company to get ISO 42001 certification, which is a standard for security compliance in generative AI, it showed that they were serious about ethical AI.
Riparbelli’s work includes talking about policy issues. He has lobbied for laws to ban non-consensual deepfakes, such as the UK’s legislation passed in April 2024, and has called for a pause on overly restrictive AI regulations in Europe, arguing that they could stifle innovation. Synthesia is a leader in ethical AI deployment because of his balanced approach, which supports both innovation and responsibility.
How to Grow Synthesia from a Startup to a Global Powerhouse
Riparbelli has led Synthesia from a small team working in a London cubicle to a global business with more than 400 employees in offices in London, New York, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Zurich, and Munich. More than 60,000 businesses are now customers of the company, including well-known brands like Xerox, Heineken, and UiPath. In January 2025, Synthesia hired Peter Hill, a former Amazon executive, as its Chief Technology Officer. He will be in charge of creating Synthesia 2.0, a next-generation platform with advanced features like personal AI avatars, AI screen recording, and multilingual dubbing.
Riparbelli’s strategic vision has been a big part of Synthesia’s success. He has put usefulness ahead of novelty, focusing on practical uses like corporate training and customer service instead of chasing after flashy but immature apps like VR integrations or crypto-linked features. This focus has led to Synthesia’s amazing growth. In 2025, the company made $62 million in sales and closed $1.1 million in annual recurring revenue in just one day.
Riparbelli’s Vision for the Future of Synthesia
Riparbelli sees a future in which AI changes the way media is made in a big way. He thinks that by 2028, AI will make it possible to make Hollywood-style movies on a laptop, which will make traditional studios unnecessary. Synthesia is already working on next-generation avatars that can show complex emotions. This opens up new possibilities for entertainment, education, and business storytelling. The company’s recent release of “expressive avatars” and advanced video translation tools shows how dedicated it is to pushing the limits of AI-driven communication.
Riparbelli’s life story is similar to Synthesia’s growth. He has become a leading voice in the AI industry, being named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Europe” list in 2020 and TIME’s AI list in 2024. His estimated net worth of £85 million shows how successful he is, but Riparbelli still cares more about making a difference than making money. “We’re only 5% into the roadmap of what’s coming,” he told Accel, hinting at big plans for interactive avatars, better movement, and multimodal intelligence.
In conclusion, a legacy of responsibility and innovation
Victor Riparbelli’s rise from a tech fan in Copenhagen to the CEO of a $2.1 billion AI unicorn shows how committed he is to ethical innovation and how strong his vision is. He has changed the way videos are made and set a standard for responsible AI development in a time when ethics are a big problem by co-founding Synthesia. Riparbelli’s leadership will definitely shape the future of media as Synthesia keeps growing. Businesses and people will be able to communicate in ways that were once thought impossible. His story shows that even the most outrageous dreams can come true if you have the right mix of passion, persistence, and purpose.
