SRI Ventures, the corporate venture arm of SRI International, today announced the launch of its new portfolio company Vitrina AI, an AI-powered SaaS platform for the film and television industry that tracks and facilitates international video content transactions. The first platform to track deals across the global video entertainment industry, Vitrina AI will cover more 30 countries at launch and can rapidly scale to more markets thanks to SRI International’s innovative artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies that generate unified, structured datasets from disparate sources.
A market-changing platform, Vitrina AI will help connect video content producers, service-providers and buyers to more than 60,000 companies including studios, production houses, distributors, streaming services and other video service providers with curated coverage of their services, catalogs, deals, clients and projects. By next year, Vitrina AI aims to track data from more than half a million companies across more than 50 countries. Users can search by market, genre and major local players and also monitor long-term content transaction trends. Buyers can leverage the platform to connect directly with studios, distributors, production and content adaptation services worldwide, and use Vitrina AI’s virtual deal rooms for secure negotiations.
“Currently, the international video content exchange process is opaque, cumbersome and expensive. Between challenges like language barriers, varying legal structures and different business and cultural norms, it remains arduous to source, distribute and adapt content across borders,” said Atul Phadnis, CEO & founder of Vitrina AI. “With Vitrina AI’s proprietary platform powered by SRI’s AI technology, we have created a solution that will significantly expedite and simplify cross-border dealmaking by bringing industry intelligence, company connections and negotiation capabilities all under one platform.”
Under incubation at SRI International, Vitrina AI built a powerful search engine that tracks the goings-on of a traditionally opaque industry and connects video content buyers and sellers across the world. With SRI’s market-leading NLP and ML technologies, Vitrina AI disentangles a mix of industry databases, media reporting and other public repositories to create a streamlined search process that allows users to find studios, distributors, content service providers, broadcasters and streaming companies globally.
“Today, we are excited to launch Vitrina AI and bring SRI’s AI technology to the entertainment industry for the first time,” said Todd Stavish, Vice President and Managing Director of SRI Ventures. “SRI Ventures began incubating Vitrina AI in 2019, helping the founders develop their business model while building and rapidly scaling their platform using SRI’s unique AI and ML intellectual property. We look forward to their success in this new domain.”
Vitrina AI has already begun to build excitement with a recently completed Seed funding round, led by Unlock Venture Partners, with additional investment from institutional investors Emergent Ventures, GravityRanch Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, Arka Labs and Sparq Capital. The company is also backed by Mitch Barns (former CEO of Nielsen), Jon Oringer (founder and Chairman of Shutterstock), Steve Ciesinski (Faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs group, among others.
“The fundamental shifts in the video industry due to digital streaming, globalization and the rationalizing of cost structures have created the perfect backdrop for a platform like Vitrina AI. The use of AI in mapping the global video supply chain and tracking regional market deals trends, combined with the team’s relevant domain experience, provides the company with the right sensibility and technology to succeed,” said Sanjay Reddy, Partner at Unlock Venture Partners.
The Vitrina platform will be available on July 1 through the portal vitrina.ai on an ‘invitation-only’ basis to ensure exclusive access for video entertainment industry players.
Source: exchange4media.com
