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Synthesia launched an option to make AI-generated avatars by recording footage of yourself with a webcam or your phone.

Synthesia

Synthesia, a British artificial intelligence startup, on Monday showed off a slew of new product updates including the ability to create your own Apple-style key presentations with AI avatars by using just a laptop webcam or your phone.

The seven-year-old firm, which is backed by Nvidia, said the new product updates will make it more of an all-encompassing video production suite for large companies, rather than just a platform that offers users the ability to create AI-generated avatars.

Among the new updates Synthesia is launching is the ability to produce AI avatars using webcams or a phone, “full body” avatars with hands and arms, and a screen recording tool that shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.

What is Synthesia?

Synthesia, which says it’s used by nearly half of the Fortfune 500, uses AI avatars for all kinds of purposes.

These can range from creating tailored training videos to guide employees around certain processes, or generating promotional material that can be shown in the form of a video rather than an email or other textual communications.

Apple's biggest challenges to bring its AI products to China

But that hasn’t always been the case. According to co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli, in the first three years of the company’s story, Synthesia actually started out trying to sell its technology to Hollywood agencies and big-budget video production companies. The firm used computer vision for an AI dubbing tool that made mouth movements more lifelike for different languages.

“What we figured out was that the quality threshold to do anything with these guys was so big, no matter what we do, we’ll be a very small part of a much bigger process,” Riparbelli told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

“What was more interesting was the democratization aspect of: There are millions of people in the world who want to make video, but they’re not making video today because they don’t have the budget.”

In an Apple-style keynote, Synthesia’s CEO unveiled the firm’s new products, touting them as a more productivity-focused suite of tools for use by businesses, rather than just a platform that offers AI avatars.

Apple-style keynotes with a webcam

But now, Synthesia is introducing new software which will make it easier for users to produce a digital version of themselves from anywhere, using just a webcam and Synthesia’s software.

The company is also launching the ability to create full-body avatars. This is different to Synthesia’s current avatars, which are limited to just portrait view. Now, you can go into a studio with dozens of cameras, sensors and lights all around you to make avatars that can move their hands.

Generating hands is something that’s traditionally hard for AI to do — often because hands are only a small part of the human body and not typically the focus in visual content.

Synthesia also debuted the option to play videos of AI avatars speaking in any language they like, whether it’s English, French, German, or Chinese.

In the future, Synthesia says, it will be able to tailor AI avatars for different countries: For example, a Nigerian avatar running a user through a tutorial rather than an American.

Synthesia’s AI video assistant can produce summaries of entire articles and documents.

Synthesia

Synthesia also launched a new AI video assistant which can produce summaries of entire articles and documents. This could be a human resources specialist making a quick video explaining company benefits packages, for example.

Synthesia’s screen recording tool shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.

Synthesia

Another big feature the company is rolling out is a new screen recording tool, which shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.

Not chasing a ‘PR moment’

In CNBC’s interview with him, Riparbelli characterized what Synthesia is trying to do as an enterprise-focused product overhaul, which would make it more akin to giants like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Zoom in the enterprise category.

“The world has been blown away by this stuff for the last 12 to 18 to 24 months, which is awesome,” Riparbelli told CNBC.

“But now we have experimented a lot, and we have found out the right use cases for these technologies that have lasting business value. They’re not like just a short-term PR moment.”

“You need to do that business goal of reducing customer support tickets by showing videos instead of text; or sell by making videos instead of just sending out emails,” he added.

“Now people are creating workflows around that. They need better ways to achieve their business goals, not just an interface with AI models. That’s where we’re going as a company.”

Last year, Synthesia raised $90 million from investors including U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and venture capital firm Accel, in a funding round that valued it at $1 billion and giving it “unicorn” status.

The company’s competitors include AI video tools Veed, Colossyan, Elai, and HeyGen. And Chinese-owned social media app TikTok also recently debuted Symphony Assistant, a product that allows creators to make their own AI avatars.

 The company makes money through a number of subscription pricing plans ranging from $22 for a “starter” plan and $67 for a “creator” plan, to custom “enterprise” plans where pricing is based on negotiations with Synthesia’s sales team.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin miner that announced plans this week to make ETH its primary treasury reserve asset, jumped about 20%. It’s gained more than 1,000% since the announcement. Betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy, added more than 11%. Bit Digital, which last week exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, jumped more than 6%.

“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.

On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.

The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.

Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.

The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee on being named chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.

Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.

The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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China’s Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

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China's Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.

Honor

Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.

The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.

The company, which spun off from Chinese tech giant Huawei in 2020, is looking to stand out from rivals with key features of the Magic V5, like artificial intelligence, battery and size.

Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.

In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.

Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.

Honor vs. Samsung

Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.

Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.

Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.

“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.

“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.

The thinness of a foldable phone has become a battleground for smartphone makers to appeal to consumers who want the large screen size the device has to offer without extra weight.

At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.

“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.

“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.

Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.

Honor talks up AI

Smartphone players, including Honor, have also looked to stand out via the AI features available on their device.

In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.

Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.

The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.

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