Gamma Acquires Design Startup Lica to Build a Dedicated Research Lab

In a move that reflects the accelerating pace of acquisitions in the AI-powered presentation tools sector, «Gamma», the company specializing in creating presentations, announced its acquisition of the Accel-backed startup «Lica». The deal aims to establish a dedicated design research lab within Gamma, to be led by the founders of the acquired company.

Who Is Lica and How Did It Start?

Lica initially launched as an app capable of turning screenshots and recordings into presentations and project videos. It was founded by Priya Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta in 2023, and within a single year it successfully raised four million dollars in funding from prominent investors, including Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global.

Over the past two years, the company focused its efforts on collaborating with e-commerce sites to produce marketing videos that adhere to each brand's visual identity and guidelines, giving it practical experience in professional visual communication.

The Shared Vision Behind the Deal

Kalyanaraman explained that Lica was working to build AI models centered on different modes of communication, including video and design. The founders had prior familiarity with Gamma's CEO, Lee Grant, as both companies are backed by the same investors, which paved the way for talks that ultimately led to the acquisition.

She noted that both parties share a single vision of simplifying visual communication. While Lica focused on advanced research and making it available to users, Gamma excelled at expanding distribution channels and reaching more than 100 million users. With the rapid developments in this field, both parties saw combining their efforts as the optimal choice.

What Does This Mean for the Future of Presentations?

Gamma will continue its focus on helping users create presentations, but like other design companies, it has begun offering image generation services. Through the new research division, the company aspires to explore entirely new formats for visual communication.

Lee Grant said that presentations represent the company's core use case today, but the question at hand concerns how to expand their concept, form, and the way users interact with them in the future. He added that these questions demand deep thought about the essence of the responsibility of communication, which is what drives the company to invest in this field—one that he believes no one else is tackling with this depth.

Customization and Personal Communication

For her part, Purvanshi Mehta explained that the new research division will work on tailoring presentation and communication styles for AI models to suit different audiences and tastes. She noted that the goal of any presentation is to convey a larger message, and the ambition is to build a platform that allows these objectives to be customized to a degree that produces high-quality outputs that can be easily adjusted to suit diverse audiences.

Although Gamma did not reveal the products it intends to develop as a result of this acquisition, it affirmed its desire to create seamless, multimedia presentations, along with new modes of communication.

A Wave of Investments and Mergers in the Sector

The AI-powered presentation startup sector has seen significant investment interest in recent years, as evidenced by several examples:

• Prezent raised 50 million dollars across two funding rounds.
• Gamma itself raised 68 million dollars at a valuation of 2.1 billion dollars.
• Presentations.ai also received backing from the Accel fund.

Signs of consolidation and unification have also begun to appear in this sector, as OpenAI recently acquired NextSlide, reflecting growing competition and a desire to consolidate technical capabilities under larger umbrellas.

Ultimately, the Gamma–Lica deal reflects a clear trend toward combining advanced research with broad distribution capabilities, in pursuit of redefining the concept of visual communication in the age of artificial intelligence.

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