Gamma acquires Lica to widen AI design research

Lica’s founders will lead a new Gamma research lab as the company looks beyond slide decks to more personalized visual communication tools.

Gamma has acquired design startup Lica as it looks to expand beyond presentations into a broader set of visual communication tools. The deal pairs a fast-growing presentation company with a smaller startup that had been testing how AI could shape video, design, and branded content. Gamma says the team will help it explore what communication formats might look like next, though it has not said which products, if any, will emerge from the acquisition.

Lica’s founders, Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta, will lead Gamma’s new design research effort. Lica started out with an app that could turn screenshots and recordings into project presentations and videos, then later shifted toward helping e-commerce companies create marketing videos that followed brand guidelines.

Lica shifted from general tools to branded video work

Lica was founded in 2023 and raised $4 million a year later from investors including Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global. Its early pitch focused on turning existing materials such as screenshots and recordings into presentations and videos, but the company later narrowed in on a more specific business use case.

That work centered on helping online retail businesses create marketing videos that matched their brand rules. In effect, Lica moved away from broad presentation tooling and toward software aimed at making visual content easier to produce for companies that need consistency across marketing materials.

Now that experience is moving into Gamma, which already has a foothold in presentation software and wants to explore other communication formats as well.

Gamma is looking past standard slide decks

Gamma said it will keep its core focus on helping people build presentations. At the same time, the company has already begun offering image generation and is now looking at other ways people communicate visually.

CEO Lee Grant said Gamma is thinking about how presentations could evolve, including what kinds of visuals are possible and how interactive they might become. He described the acquisition as part of a broader effort to rethink the “core responsibility of communication,” rather than simply making slides faster to produce.

Gamma did not disclose any specific products tied to the deal. What it did say, according to IT-PUB News, is that it wants to create “fluid, multimodal presentations” and other communication formats — a sign that the company is looking beyond static slide decks.

The new research lab will work on personalization

According to Mehta, the new division will focus on adapting presentation and communication styles in AI models for different audiences and preferences. That suggests a more tailored approach, where the same underlying content could be shaped differently depending on who it is for.

Mehta said the goal is to build a platform that can generate a strong starting point and then be edited for different audiences. In practical terms, Gamma and Lica are aiming for AI tools that do more than produce a generic presentation. They want systems that help users create material suited to a specific context, tone, or viewer.

Kalyanaraman said the two companies shared a similar vision for making visual communication easier. She also said Lica had focused on frontier research and on making that research accessible to users, while Gamma had built distribution and reached more than 100 million users. That contrast in strengths appears to have helped bring the two companies together.

AI presentation startups are drawing funding and deals

The acquisition also fits a broader pattern in AI presentation software. Startups in the category have attracted significant investor interest over the past few years, with several companies raising large rounds.

Prezent has raised $50 million across two rounds. Gamma has raised $68 million at a $2.1 billion valuation. Presentations.ai has also been backed by Accel. The source also notes that the market is beginning to consolidate, with OpenAI acquiring NextSlide earlier this month.

That makes Gamma’s purchase of Lica more than a one-off transaction. It points to a market where larger players are increasingly willing to buy smaller startups instead of building every capability in-house.

For users, the practical effect could eventually be more advanced tools for creating slides and other visual content, especially if Gamma turns Lica’s research into products. But for now, the company has offered direction more than detail: it wants presentations to become more flexible, more visual, and easier to adapt for different audiences.