An Adobe sign hangs along Main Street during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 in Park City, Utah.
David Becker | Getty Images
LONDON — Adobe has invested in Synthesia, a British artificial intelligence startup, in a bet that the technology will transform video production.
Synthesia told CNBC that Adobe’s venture capital arm injected an undisclosed amount of funds into the startup as part of a “strategic” partnership, without elaborating further on financial and commercial terms.
The startup, which says it serves more than 70% of the Fortune 100, sells a platform that businesses can use to develop videos with life-like avatars generated by AI. Individuals can make their own AI avatars, either at one of Synthesia’s production studios or on a personal device.
Adobe, a creative technology powerhouse valued at roughly $150 billion, is best known for the Photoshop image editing tool. The company also makes Premiere Pro, a video editing platform widely used by professionals in broadcast media, advertising and other industries.
“We’re building the world’s leading AI video platform for enterprise, and Adobe’s investment validates that direction,” Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli told CNBC. “We share a vision: democratizing high-quality content creation and making enterprise communication faster and more effective.”
It’s not the first time Adobe has placed a big bet on a venture-backed startup. It previously tried to acquire design platform Figma for $20 billion, but called the deal off following scrutiny from European Union and U.K. regulators. Adobe is also an active venture investor, backing startups such as Captions and VidMob.
Profitability ‘not an immediate focus’
In addition to the investment from Adobe, Synthesia also announced that it hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) — a measure of annual revenue generated from subscriptions that renew each year.
“We’ve grown approximately 100% year-over-year, driven by strong customer expansion and best-in-class unit economics,” Riparbelli said.“Surpassing $100 million in ARR puts us in a very small group of AI-native companies with real commercial traction.”
The startup remains lossmaking, however — and is not focusing on making a profit anytime soon.
In 2023, Synthesia reported a pre-tax loss of £25.2 million on revenues of £25.7 million, according to a U.K. Companies House filing. Profitability is “not an immediate focus,” Riparbelli told CNBC. “But the path is clear.”
Synthesia was most recently valued at $2.1 billion in an investment round announced in January. Its rivals include Colossyan, DeepBrain AI, Invideo AI, Filmora and Veed.io. The startup also faces competition from OpenAI, whose text-to-video model Sora can create realistic video clips based on user prompts.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
Read more CNBC tech news
It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.
The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.
The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.
In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.
Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.
Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:
(Learn the best 2026 strategies from inside the NYSE with Josh Brown and others at CNBC PRO Live. Tickets and info here.)
Opendoor co-founder and newly minted board chair Keith Rabois said remote work and a “bloated” workforce have been a drag on the company’s culture, as he vowed to slash headcount.
“There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.
The online real-estate platform on Wednesday appointed former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO after investor pressure caused his predecessor, Carrie Wheeler, to resign last month. Opendoor also named Rabois as chairman and said Eric Wu, who served as the company’s first CEO before stepping down in 2023, would return to the board.
The announcement sent Opendoor shares soaring 78% on Thursday, before the stock slid more than 12% on Friday. It is still up almost 500% this year, after an army of retail investors pushed up the stock price when hedge fund manager Eric Jackson began touting the company.
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
Opendoor year-to-date stock chart.
Opendoor’s business involves using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains.
Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson bought shares of Opendoor in July. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.
Rabois said he has a “high level view of the strategy” that’s needed to transform Opendoor, and that the headcount reductions are necessary to resolve the company’s cash burn.
“The culture was broken,” Rabois said. “These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.”
He added that Opendoor “went down this DEI path,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion.