Kaltura acquires eSelf, founded by creator of Snap’s AI, in $27M deal | TechCrunch

Kaltura, a New York-headquartered AI video platform company, is acquiring eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup behind conversational avatars — AI-generated digital humans that can talk with users — for about $27 million. Kaltura announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eSelf, a platform supporting more than 30 languages and featuring a user-friendly studio for creating, customizing, and deploying photorealistic digital avatars.

Co-founded in 2023 by CEO Alan Bekker, who previously sold his first startup, Voca, to Snap in 2020 — and CTO Eylon Shoshan, eSelf brings deep technical expertise in speech-to-video generation, low-latency speech recognition, and screen understanding, which allows avatars to see and respond to what’s on a user’s screen. The eSelf co-founders will join Kaltura to oversee the integration of eSelf’s technology into the company, with all current eSelf employees coming on board as well.

The two-year-old startup has a small but strong team of around 15 AI experts, Ron Yekutiel, co-founder and CEO of Kaltura, told TechCrunch. He noted that Bekker’s former company specialized in natural language processing, which helps computers understand human speech, and computer vision, saying it was a “very leading company in the area of conversational speech bots. And so he’s an expert [in this field], and that’s what we bought,” Yekutiel said.

Kaltura offers a suite of cloud-based software solutions designed for advanced video applications, including a corporate video portal akin to a private YouTube, tools for webinars and virtual events, and integrations that embed video learning into university learning management systems, or platforms that organize online coursework.

The Nasdaq-listed company also delivers virtual classroom products and end-to-end TV streaming solutions. Kaltura’s video platform serves over 800 enterprise customers, helping them engage users across sales, marketing, customer care, education, and entertainment. Its clients include tech giants like Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and IBM, as well as leading banks, insurance companies, consulting firms, pharmaceutical companies, and universities in the U.S.

Kaltura plans to integrate eSelf.ai’s virtual agent technology across its video offerings; the integration aims to enable agents that can listen, speak, and interpret user screens in real time.

“This acquisition was so strategic. We were actively evaluating multiple companies to find the right fit. We determined that they [eSelf] were best-in-class for real-time, synchronous conversation — not just video-on-demand lip-syncing — and that they had an impressive speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology stack,” Yekutiel said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Beyond the technology, there was also a strong cultural and geographic alignment, which was critical for us.”

Why a video company is betting on conversational avatars

For the past two decades, businesses have mostly used video for streaming, uploading, and managing content. But that’s changing fast. Thanks to AI, videos can now be generated instantly — hyper-personalized and contextual — giving every viewer their own custom experience, tailored exactly to what they need in that moment, Yekutiel explained.

“We started with video, then moved to personalized video, and now, with eSelf’s technology, we’re adding human-like capabilities — faces, eyes, mouths, ears — to make our AI agents conversational and expressive,” Yekutiel said.

Kaltura is evolving from a video platform into a video-based customer and employee experience provider, where video serves as the interface. Unlike most avatar companies that offer only a “face,” it delivers the full workflow — avatar, intelligence, and enterprise-connected knowledge. The focus isn’t just streaming video; it’s driving measurable business results and ROI, the CEO added.

The company plans to launch standalone, embeddable agents for uses including sales, marketing, customer support, and training. Target sectors include education, media and telecom, e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.

Asked about media reports saying Kaltura was exploring a sale or merger at a $400 million to $500 million valuation, Yekutiel told TechCrunch that Kaltura has explored opportunities with a range of companies, including potential “acquisitions, mergers with similarly sized firms, and connections with some larger players.” But it never got close to a transaction like the ones being reported, he said. He also pointed to Kaltura’s recent acquisitions, including its fourth company, as evidence of the company’s continued commitment to its current strategy.

This marks 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 its$4.5 million announced in December 2024.

Kaltura, which went public in 2021, reports around $180 million in revenue, is profitable on an adjusted EBITDA and cash flow basis, and has about 600 employees.