1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s discuss the ones that are lower hanging fruits. It would be interesting for us to hear what you have invested in, where you don’t think the price is so far out and where you can start seeing real value or impact now. What are some of the companies that you’ve invested in and why?

Daniel Cohen: I can give two or three companies that I really like and are very relevant.

One early stage company called Panjaya recently announced the funding. It does high quality dubbing for videos. Basically, you can take this video and instantly dub it where we are all speaking fluent French in our same voice with unbelievable lip sync. That is done in a perfect way that not only gives the exact meaning of the words, but also has the same emotional meaning. When I say, “This is amazing!”, it will capture that in French exactly the same way it was captured in English. AI does a phenomenal job in that.

Sramana Mitra: You can change the lip sync as well?

Daniel Cohen: Yes, the lip sync as well. So it’s the same voice; lip moves and suddenly you see a video of me talk fluent Spanish. I don’t know if one single word and it looks like a million dollars. However, the expectation of users is very high. Even if there’s one small miss, people say, “Ah, this is not as good as we thought.” They think AI can do it at 100%, and we’re probably more than 95-96% at this point.

Sramana Mitra: Well, that’s very far along though.

Daniel Cohen: Yes, it’s very fine and value is great, right? There’s an example of a technology company in Silicon Valley. They use it for CEO presentations to the entire global company. He speaks in all the languages for all his offices. It’s authentic. It looks real. People finally understand exactly what he’s saying. Although English is dominant for everybody in the industry, people still prefer to hear it in their own mother tongue.

Sramana Mitra: Where is this company going to market? Is it in the corporative vertical? Where is it? What is the strategy?

Daniel Cohen: They’re launching in three verticals. So corporate is one of them, but it’s focused on media. They’re working with TED, for example. The other one is education.

Sramana Mitra: Okay, very cool.

Daniel Cohen: I think education is a great vertical, because again, I think the user really wants to get the essence of what is being said and getting it in your own language reduces another barrier in the education process.

Sramana Mitra: Well, and companies like Netflix and Amazon must be salivating at something like this, no?

Daniel Cohen: I think for them, it’s right but different. They have a different budget, different expectations. They’re willing to have a much longer development cycle on what they’re willing to do with dubbing, as opposed to a shorter video where your budget is lower, yet your quality expectations are still very high.

That’s just one example. Can I take another example?

Sramana Mitra: Of course, you can take two to three examples.

Daniel Cohen: Another one that we’re investors in is a company called Taranis, which uses AI in agriculture. They capture videos across the entire spectrum – from satellites, airplanes, and drones. They put all the information that is captured from all the imaging and analyze it and can find certain problems or issues or data about the field of agriculture. It’s a great way for AI to replace experts in agriculture as they try to understand better what’s happening across huge fields.

Sramana Mitra: What can they find from these images? Can you give some examples of the kinds of actionable items they can find from this?

Daniel Cohen: I think it’s around crop management such as diseases in plants and find early problems in these fields. It’s also about how different areas of the field react to certain weather. I think they’re also looking at even energy usage and energy consumption and some other applications as well.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures
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