The research and development company DeepCraft is being acquired by SoftBank-based digital creation platform Picsart. The deal is in the seven-figure range, but the exact terms are not being disclosed.
A range of digital creation and editing tools aimed at both consumers and professionals alike make photo and video editing more fun and accessible. The company believes DeepCraft's A.I. technical talent and its breakthrough in computer vision and machine learning will enhance its own A.I. technology. The team will complement the A.I. research and development arm of the company.
DeepCraft was the country's first unicorn and specialized in video and image processing. The co-founders have spent more than 20 years in A.I. and machine learning, and are well-known in their local community. The deputy minister for the Ministry of High Tech Industry Republic of Armenia was held by Abroyan. 13 years later, he was a senior R&D engineer at Synopsys.
The team at DeepCraft worked with a number of clients on a contract basis. The work has been done and the team will now work from the offices of Picsart. The DeepCraft team of eight senior machine learning and video engineers will be joining the Picsart team as full-time employees as a result of the deal.
The acquisition of EFEKT by Picsart has seen usage surge in recent years, as its app has been adopted by social media creators and e-commerce shops which use video. More than 180 million videos have been edited in the app of PicsArt so far in the year. It now offers thousands of effects and dozens of video editing tools, and plans to grow this lineup as A.I. and cloud technology evolve.
With DeepCraft, Picsart is interested in how the team's technology expertise can help it move forward with its support of video, which the company says will be a significant focus in 2022.
According to the company, Picsart is not acquiring specific intellectual property from DeepCraft.
Prior to the deal, DeepCraft and PicsArt had been collaborating on various technology developments.
Artavazd Mehrabyan, co-founder and CTO of Picsart, said that they have been working with the DeepCraft team for over a year. He said that the DeepCraft team will play a significant role in building the future of video as they invest even further into their video capabilities.
The DeepCraft deal is the first acquisition from Picsart since raising its Series C round in August. The company's valuation went up from $600 million to $600 million thanks to the round.
