HeyGen
Headquarters
Los Angeles, CAFounded
2020CEO / Founder
Joshua XuEmployees
201-500Funding
Series B — $74MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
8.0/10Website
heygen.com/
Profile updated
About HeyGen
HeyGen is an AI video generation company founded in 2020 by Joshua Xu and Wayne Liang and headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The platform allows users to create videos featuring AI-generated avatars, synthetic voiceovers, and automated translations without requiring cameras, studios, or on-screen talent.
HeyGen's core products include a text-to-video tool, a video translation and dubbing feature supporting over 40 languages, and a custom avatar builder that can replicate a user's likeness and voice. The platform is used by marketing teams, content creators, and enterprise customers for training videos, product demos, and localized content. Its video translation feature gained notable public attention in late 2023 when viral demonstrations showed real-time lip-synced dubbing of public figures.
The company raised a $5.6 million seed round in 2022, followed by a $18 million Series A in 2023. In November 2023, HeyGen closed a $60 million Series B round at a reported valuation of approximately $500 million, bringing total funding to roughly $74 million. The company has grown headcount significantly following the Series B and operates primarily as a SaaS business with subscription-based pricing tiers.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by HeyGen
All products by HeyGen reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores HeyGen
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed HeyGen's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.7 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who HeyGen competes with, and how they differ.
Synthesia is the largest AI avatar video platform by enterprise customer base, focused on corporate training and marketing video with 230+ stock avatars and enterprise compliance (SOC 2, GDPR); HeyGen leans harder into API-first custom avatar cloning and translation-driven virality.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
D-ID built its business on a developer-facing avatar/talking-photo API (Creative Reality Studio) before adding a no-code app layer, competing with HeyGen mainly on API pricing and real-time streaming avatars rather than end-to-end video production workflows.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Colossyan targets corporate L&D and compliance training specifically, with branching-scenario and multi-language course tools -- a narrower use case than HeyGen's broader marketing-plus-training positioning.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Tavus is API-first and developer-oriented, selling personalized-at-scale avatar video generation (per-viewer dynamic variables) to product and growth teams, whereas HeyGen sells a self-serve creator app alongside its API.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Captions focuses on AI-edited talking-head content for social creators -- auto-captioning, AI dubbing, eye-contact correction -- rather than HeyGen's studio-avatar and enterprise localization focus.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in HeyGen's history, with sources.
- Milestone
Surpassed $200M ARR
HeyGen announced its annualized recurring revenue passed $200M, doubling from $100M in eight months, with 30M+ users across 196 countries.
heygen.com - Milestone
Crossed $100M ARR
HeyGen crossed $100M in annualized recurring revenue, roughly two and a half years after first reaching $1M ARR in early 2023.
chatforest.com - Acquisition
Acquired Genova Labs (Alisa)
HeyGen acquired Genova Labs, maker of the Alisa AI agent; financial terms were not disclosed. The deal underpinned the September 2025 public-beta launch of HeyGen Video Agent.
c93n.com - Funding
Series A -- $60M led by Benchmark at $500M valuation
Benchmark led a $60M Series A with participation from Thrive Capital, BOND, Conviction and angel investors including Dylan Field and Elad Gil, completed after HeyGen dissolved its Shenzhen entity and shifted Chinese investors to US counterparts.
finance.yahoo.com - Funding
Raised $5.6M from Conviction
Sarah Guo's Conviction led a $5.6M round; HongShan (formerly Sequoia China) relinquished its board seat as part of the round, marking HeyGen's shift away from Chinese investors.
en.wikipedia.org - Milestone
Rebranded from Movio to HeyGen
The company rebranded a second time, from Movio to HeyGen, as it expanded from spokesperson videos toward a broader video-generation platform including translation and custom avatars.
research.contrary.com - Launch
Relocated to Los Angeles as Movio; app launched
The founders relocated the company from Shenzhen to Los Angeles and renamed it Movio to pursue US enterprise customers and GPU access; the HeyGen app launched the same month.
en.wikipedia.org - Founded
Founded in Shenzhen as Surreal
Joshua Xu and Wayne Liang, who met at Tongji University, founded the company in Shenzhen, China under the name Surreal.
en.wikipedia.org
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