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After selling his last AI startup to Meta, Beyond Presence’s founder nabs $3.1M to build lifelike avatars

Computer vision applications are getting a huge boost from advances in smartphones combined with AI that helps fill in the gaps of what everyday devices

Using these tools, a startup out of Munich called Beyond Presence believes it holds the keys to what is coming next: Hyper-realistic avatars that look and sound exactly like their human counterparts and can be used in real-time, conversational situations. The Munich-based startup had an outsized profile in its home country because the founders participated in the German TV version of “Dragons Den”/“Shark Tank” in 2020, where they raised a record-breaking €650,000. There’s an interesting detail about Beyond Presence’s early decisions around funding: It turns out that the company was accepted to participate in Y Combinator earlier this year, but opted out of the prestigious incubator.

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