HeyGen Hits $60M

Author

Mike Fishbein
June 21, 2024

Hey, welcome back to AI Marketing Brief, the qualified pipeline of AI news, trends, and tools for marketers.

Here’s what we got for you today:

  • BVP’s State of the Cloud 2024 report highlights AI’s meteoric rise

  • Personalization for conversion rate optimization emerges as a compelling AI use case

  • AI democratizes software creation, empowering a new creative class, and enabling new marketing campaigns

  • The 10-Minute Newsletter live video workshop next week

Bessemer Venture Partners’ State of the Cloud 2024 highlights five AI trends marketers must watch:

  1. Foundation models are the new "oil" driving innovation and competition among tech giants but may become commoditized

  2. AI tools are transforming developers into 10X productivity machines

  3. Voice AI is revolutionizing customer interactions with real-time, nuanced conversations

  4. Vertical AI targeting high-cost, repetitive tasks presents promising opportunities

  5. AI-generated content and tools are poised to dominate The Attention Economy

BVP’s report also drops some serious statistics:

  • ChatGPT’s monthly visits are battling it out with Reddit and X.

  • AI-native companies are hitting $1B revenue 50% faster than old-school cloud companies.

Venture Capital Eyes Personalized Ads and Marketing Workflow Automation

The AI wave is crashing into marketing, promising to transform everything from ad creation to lead generation. Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director at VC fund Zetta shares here thesis for AI in marketing in a recent podcast interview.

Imagine a world where ads are auto-generated, personalized in real-time, and interactive, making every customer feel uniquely targeted. AI isn't just about cutting costs—it's about skyrocketing effectiveness and turning marketing into a dynamic, two-way conversation.

HeyGen Rockets to $60M Series A to Revolutionize Video Storytelling

HeyGen just snagged a whopping $60M in Series A funding, turbocharging their mission to democratize video production for businesses. In a world where we devour over 1B hours of YouTube daily, HeyGen’s AI platform promises studio-quality videos without the hassle.

VC, Victor Lazarte is pumped about Benchmark’s $55M plunge into HeyGen. From scrappy beginnings to $35M ARR and a $500M valuation in a flash, HeyGen is transforming how businesses tell their stories. Get ready for avatars and video calls like never before.

My take: I’m excited about multimodal content and personalization for conversion rate optimization as a use case for AI. HeyGen could be a big piece of that puzzle.

New AI Tool: Qualified AI Offers Automates Lead Conversion

Qualified’s new product, Offers, makes personalized marketing offers across your website and automates lead capture with a single click. Making the right offers, to the right people, at the right times is a great way for marketers to boost conversion rates and revenue.

My take: I haven’t used this product, and they’re not a sponsor, but this AI use case caught my eye. It would have been almost impossible to do this manually.

Here’s some more news and hot takes for you:

  • Jasper AI, a leading AI marketing platform, has appointed Loreal Lynch as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Jasper supports over 100,000 customers, including Google and Home Depot, in transforming marketing workflows.

  • Category Pirates break down Apple’s marketing mastery in creating the Personal Intelligence category. Tim Cook and crew aren’t just adding AI—they’re proving that strategic innovation beats mere improvement.

  • Google can crawl your website, “steal” your content, and use it to train its AI and answer questions in search, without sending your traffic. Nathan Gotch says Google should seek permission and compensate creators for using their content to train its AI.

  • Just as social media revolutionized content, AI is now democratizing software creation. Anu Atluru would like to introduce you to “software creators". AI tools could be compelling new form of marketing offer.

The 10-Minute Newsletter Workshop

I’m running a live video workshop next week on how to build an AI workflow that creates newsletter content that’s actually good. Say goodbye to robotic and generic AI content with the techniques I share. Here’s a video demo for a sneak peek of the content. Sign up below with the coupon code BRIEF for $20 off!

Mike Fishbein