The Synthesia Roleplay Sessions launch marks a calculated pivot for a British startup that has spent years selling enterprises on the idea that AI avatars could replace expensive video production. Now it is betting that what companies actually want is proof their training worked.
On Wednesday, Synthesia, founded in 2017 by CEO Victor Riparbelli and co-founders Steffen Tjerrild, Professor Matt Niessner, and Professor Lourdes Agapito, unveiled Roleplay Sessions: an interactive product in which employees practise high-stakes conversations with an AI avatar that responds, pushes back, and scores performance against a rubric.
Target use cases include sales pitches, performance reviews, and customer complaints. Leadership coaching rounds out the two most popular programmes. The underlying reasoning intelligence is OpenAI’s, though Synthesia’s avatar and voice technology remain proprietary.
From Content Factory to Coaching Platform
Roleplay is the first release within a broader ‘Sessions’ platform that Synthesia plans to extend into job interviews and candidate screening. The company argues, citing a meta-analysis of learning research, that most corporate training informs and demonstrates without changing behaviour. Practice with feedback is what actually moves the needle.
‘Video performs way better than text or sending out a document,’ Riparbelli told TechCrunch. ‘But for most things, we learn the best by actually practising something rather than just reading it.’
The product also reshapes Synthesia’s competitive position. By layering rubrics, performance analytics, and granular workforce data on top of its avatar technology, the company is repositioning itself as a performance-management platform rather than a video generator.
‘From a managerial executive layer, we’re seeing huge interest in mapping out the talent in their company in a way that’s been really difficult to do before,’ Riparbelli said. ‘If you have your entire sales team practise with an AI role player, you can get very granular data on how your sales force is doing overall.’
Early Roleplay customers already in scaled commercial rollouts include, per a company spokesperson, one of the top three companies by market cap in Europe, one of the top five Fortune 100, and one of the world’s biggest recruitment firms.
Synthesia Roleplay Sessions and the Pressure to Show ROI
The launch lands at a moment when the company is carrying real financial weight. The Guardian reported that Synthesia generated revenues of $58.3 million in 2024 but posted a pre-tax loss of $59.2 million, a deficit the company attributed to investment in headcount, technology, and new offices. The same report noted Synthesia was on track to reach $200 million in revenues during 2026.
That trajectory followed a substantial fundraise. In January 2026, Synthesia announced a $200 million Series E at a $4 billion valuation, led by Google Ventures and backed by NVentures (Nvidia’s venture arm), Accel, New Enterprise Associates, Hedosophia, and Kleiner Perkins, among others. That nearly doubled the $2.1 billion valuation Synthesia carried after its $180 million Series D.
The enterprise footprint the company is defending is substantial. According to Synthesia’s own figures, 90% of Fortune 100 companies use its platform, alongside 87.5% of France’s CAC 40 and 95% of Germany’s DAX 40. Named clients include SAP, Merck, Heineken, Zoom, and Bosch. Its avatars support more than 140 languages, a breadth that matters when multinationals are rolling out training across dozens of markets simultaneously.
Roleplay is, for now, an enterprise-only offering. Riparbelli has said the plan is to open it to small businesses, prosumers, and potentially educational institutions within the next few months as inference costs continue to fall. Customers can build their own training programmes on the platform or work with Synthesia’s consultants to develop bespoke solutions drawing on existing company documents and internal context.
The deeper argument Riparbelli is making is that the current enterprise AI wave is entering a second phase: one where a polished demo is no longer sufficient and measurable business outcomes are the only currency that matters. For Synthesia, the Sessions platform is how it plans to collect that currency, and the data it accumulates on workforce performance could become harder for rivals to replicate than any avatar or voice model.
The first real test will be whether the rubric scores translate into sales numbers that close the gap between $58 million in revenues and $59 million in losses.
