Who Owns Pictory? Company Profile & Background
If you’re researching solutions to automate video creation using artificial intelligence, there’s a good chance you came across Pictory. As covered previously, Pictory is an industry-leading AI-enabled software platform that helps content creators like myself easily convert long-form content into professional short-form videos. But who exactly created this revolutionary video editing tool? And what motivated…
If you’re researching solutions to automate video creation using artificial intelligence, there’s a good chance you came across Pictory.
As covered previously, Pictory is an industry-leading AI-enabled software platform that helps content creators like myself easily convert long-form content into professional short-form videos.
But who exactly created this revolutionary video editing tool?
And what motivated them to found Pictory back in 2019?
In this article, we’ll explore:
- Pictory’s company history and founder background
- Details on their recent funding and development
- The platform’s vision for using AI in video
- Frequently asked questions about the startup
Let’s get into it!
Pictory Company Profile Overview
Firstly, Pictory was created by Vikram Chalana and Vishal Chalana, two entrepreneurial brothers with a track record of successful ventures behind them.
Vikram Chalana is an experienced technology leader and CEO having previously founded companies like WinShuttle and Verathon.
Whereas Vishal Chalana is a veteran software developer and engineer who has worked at several major firms including Quark Media and Innomedia.
Together the Chalana brothers possess the perfect balance of entrepreneurism, leadership, technical development and AI experience needed to create game-changing products like Pictory.
They co-founded the company back in 2019, shortly before the global pandemic triggered huge remote work and e-learning trends that made solutions to produce videos fast at low cost hugely valuable.
Pictory was likely conceived from Vikram’s first-hand pain points around video creation as a prolific content producer and public speaker.
The company is headquartered in Seattle which has established itself as a hub for AI startups thanks to talent from universities like University of Washington and founded tech giants Microsoft and Amazon.
Pictory got its name from the combination of “picture” and “story”. The founders of Pictory wanted to create a platform that helps businesses tell their stories through visual content, specifically short-form videos. By converting long-form content into engaging multimedia pieces, Pictory allows businesses to share their stories in a more captivating and concise way.
Pictory core values
Pictory has established a clear set of core values that guide their company culture and product development. These values spell out “CRED” – Curiosity, Respect, Expeditious, and Data-driven. The octopus logo represents many of these qualities.
Why octopus as the logo?
Octopuses are known to be curious and creative creatures, often trying novel solutions when presented with puzzles or challenges to open food. This mirrors Pictory’s emphasis on maintaining curiosity and creativity as they pioneer new innovations in AI-powered video editing. Additionally, octopuses have decentralized brains, exemplifying Pictory’s trust in making data-based decisions over opinions across the organization. Their ability to multitask – controlling arms independently while simultaneously solving problems – also reflects Pictory’s value of acting quickly and expeditiously when opportunities arise. Overall the multitalented octopus encapsulates many attributes Pictory looks for in their team and products.
Recent Pictory Funding and Growth
Since founding Pictory in 2019, the Chalana brothers have raised $2 Million in seed funding to expand their AI video platform.
This includes a recent 2022 raise of $1 Million from the Pacific Northwest Startup Fund to further develop Pictory’s voice technology capabilities.
Abid Ali joined Pictory as the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, bringing with him a wealth of experience in growing technology businesses and a strong track record in sales, partnerships, and product management.
Bringing in heavyweights like Ali has allowed Pictory to form strategic partnerships with leaders in speech synthesis like ElevenLabs and rapidly enhance their hyper-realistic AI voice offering.
Thanks to the expanded funding and partnerships, Pictory has also boosted its number of employees over 2022.
The company doubled its headcount growing both sales and engineering teams to keep innovating features and support their rapidly expanding customer base.
So in summary, Pictory has quickly established itself as an AI-video leader and shows no signs of slowing momentum!
How Pictory Uses AI to Transform Video Creation
By now I am sure you have a clearer picture of who founded Pictory and their background.
But what makes their AI platform so uniquely capable of automating areas of the video production process that previously required extensive manual work?
At a high-level Pictory ingests raw content sources like audio transcripts, blog posts or uploads then leverages artificial intelligence to handle tedious tasks like:
- Summarizing long-form content into concise scripts
- Sourcing media assets like b-roll video footage and images
- Voiceover recording using AI-generated speech
- Captioning and subtitling
This allows the Pictory software to automate up to 80% of the work required to produce a professional short-form video.
Users simply provide the raw inputs and creative direction, then review and refine the AI’s suggested video storyboard.
Once happy, hit render and Pictory will piece together all the elements like scenes, voiceover, captions etc into a slick video ready for publishing.
And best of all no fancy equipment, editing skills or production experience is required thanks to automation!
This breakthrough enables anyone to make broadcast-quality videos at a fraction of the time and cost previously needed.
Allowing more creators than ever before to leverage video content for marketing, eLearning and more without big production budgets.
It’s this vision of opening up video creation through AI, perfected over 3+ years of development, that sets Pictory apart as an industry trailblazer.
Frequently Asked Pictory Company Questions
Lastly let’s quickly summarize some common questions when researching the Pictory company profile:
Who founded Pictory?
Pictory was founded in 2019 by Vikram Chalana and Vishal Chalana – two entrepreneurial brothers with extensive technology and leadership experience.
How much funding has Pictory raised?
To date Pictory has raised over $2 Million from investors and venture capital funds including a recent $1M seed round.
How many people work at Pictory?
While initially bootstrapped, recent funding has allowed Pictory to expand their team significantly including engineers and growth staff. They likely have between 10-20 employees currently.
Where is Pictory headquartered?
Pictory is based in Bothell, Washington which has developed into a hub for AI startups in recent years thanks to an exceptional local talent pool.
Who are Pictory’s competitors?
While no direct competitors offer Pictory’s specific AI approach to automating video creation, adjacent players exist in video production and basic editing tools. But none possess the advanced AI capabilities that sets Pictory apart.
And there we have it – a complete profile covering Pictory’s origins, leadership, funding and company vision within the AI video space.
I hope you found this startup profile insightful. Now you know exactly who owns Pictory and what inspired their fantastic video creation platform!
