Lemon Slice raises $10.5 million for AI-powered video avatars
Lemon Slice, a startup making AI-generated interactive video avatars, just raised $10.5 million in seed funding with participation from Matrix Partners and Y Combinator.
Big names like Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and The Chainsmokers also joined in.
Founded in 2024 by Lina Colucci, Sidney Primas, and Andrew Weitz, the team plans to use the funds to grow their engineering and go-to-market staff.
What's cool about their tech?
Lemon Slice's model can turn a single photo into a customizable video avatar—think different backgrounds, styles, even human or non-human characters with voices from ElevenLabs.
These avatars are ready to help out in customer service chats, online classes, e-commerce sites and more.
The tech is fast (20 frames per second on just one GPU) and easy to plug into other apps via API or widget.
Safety 1st
To keep things secure and respectful, Lemon Slice has built-in guardrails so no one can clone your avatar without permission.
Plus, they use large language models for content moderation to make sure interactions stay safe for everyone.