Gamma buys Lica to build a new AI design research lab

Gamma has acquired design startup Lica in a move aimed at expanding beyond presentations into a broader AI-powered visual communication platform. The deal gives Gamma a dedicated design research lab, with Lica’s co-founders Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta set to lead the effort.

The acquisition underscores how quickly the AI presentation market is maturing. Gamma has already become one of the best-known names in the category, and now it is betting that the next stage of growth will come from making visual communication more fluid, more personalized and more interactive.

What Gamma bought and why it matters

Gamma’s purchase of Lica is not just about adding another product or team. It is an attempt to deepen the company’s research capabilities at a time when AI software is increasingly judged by how well it can combine generation, design and distribution.

Lica began as a tool for turning screenshots and recordings into presentations and videos. Over time, the startup shifted toward helping e-commerce businesses create branded marketing videos that followed company style rules. That experience gave it a practical focus on how AI can be used to produce polished, repeatable visual content rather than one-off demos.

For Gamma, which has built a large user base around presentation creation, the acquisition offers access to founders and a team that have already spent years exploring how AI can improve communication formats. Gamma said the new research division will help it think beyond static slide decks and toward richer, multimodal experiences.

How did Lica evolve before the deal?

Lica’s path helps explain why Gamma was interested in the company. Founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta, the startup initially positioned itself as a way to convert screenshots and screen recordings into presentation-ready material and short-form video.

In 2024, the company raised $4 million from investors including Accel, South Park Commons and Village Global. That funding gave Lica room to refine its product and focus on a more commercial use case: helping online merchants and brands generate marketing videos that remained consistent with established brand rules.

That kind of workflow sits at the intersection of AI generation, branding and editing, which has become a valuable niche as companies look for faster ways to produce marketing content without sacrificing consistency.

From screenshot conversion to brand-safe video

At its core, Lica was trying to make visual production easier for non-designers and business teams. The company’s technology aimed to transform raw material, such as screen captures or recordings, into content that could be presented to customers, investors or internal stakeholders.

Its later e-commerce work suggested a growing emphasis on practical business value. Brand-safe generation is more difficult than generic image or video creation, because outputs need to be aligned with tone, layout and messaging. That challenge likely made Lica especially relevant to Gamma’s longer-term ambitions.

Why are presentation startups consolidating now?

Presentation startups are consolidating because the category has attracted heavy investment, rising competition and a growing need for differentiation. As more companies build AI tools for slide creation, visual storytelling and marketing content, larger players are looking for ways to stand out through research depth and product breadth.

The deal between Gamma and Lica comes shortly after OpenAI acquired NextSlide, a sign that the market is entering a new phase in which standalone presentation tools may increasingly be absorbed into larger AI platforms or stronger distribution networks.

The sector has also drawn substantial capital. Prezent has raised $50 million across two rounds. Gamma itself has secured $68 million and reached a valuation of $2.1 billion. Presentations.ai, another notable player, has also been backed by Accel. Those numbers illustrate both investor enthusiasm and the pressure to keep innovating in a crowded space.

What Gamma says it wants to build next

Gamma says presentations remain central to its business, but the company now wants to stretch the idea of what a presentation can be. That includes image generation, richer visuals and new forms of interactivity.

The company’s leadership believes the next wave of innovation will come from rethinking communication rather than simply automating slide creation. In its view, the real opportunity is to make presentations feel more dynamic, more adaptable and more closely tailored to the needs of the audience.

Gamma has not yet said exactly what products will emerge from the acquisition, but it has indicated that it is pursuing “fluid, multimodal” presentations and other communication formats. That language suggests an interest in combining text, images, video and possibly interactive elements in a single workflow.

Gamma’s chief executive framed the acquisition as a bet on a deeper question than slide-making: how visual communication should evolve in the future, what kinds of visuals people will use, and how interactive those formats can become.

How does Gamma define the opportunity?

Gamma defines the opportunity as a communication problem, not just a design problem. The company believes that presentations are only one version of a larger user need: turning ideas into compelling visual output that works across settings and audiences.

That approach could give Gamma a broader product roadmap than competitors focused narrowly on decks. If successful, the company could position itself as a platform for producing business communication in multiple formats, from investor updates and sales materials to marketing visuals and interactive storytelling.

What role will Lica’s founders play?

Lica’s founders will lead the new design research lab inside Gamma. That is important because it means the acquisition is being framed as an engineering and product bet, not simply a talent addition.

Priyaa Kalyanaraman said the two startups shared a similar long-term goal: making visual communication easier. She explained that Lica had spent much of its effort on frontier research and on making advanced ideas accessible to everyday users, while Gamma had focused on distribution and on bringing its application to more than 100 million users.

Her remarks point to a complementary deal structure. Lica appears to contribute technical exploration and research depth, while Gamma brings scale, product reach and a consumer-facing brand that already has strong traction.

Kalyanaraman said the founders saw a shared mission in simplifying visual communication and concluded that Gamma’s scale and Lica’s research could be stronger together than apart.

Why the founders saw a fit

The relationship between the two companies did not begin with a cold acquisition approach. Kalyanaraman said the founders were already familiar with Gamma chief executive Lee Grant, helped by the fact that both companies had backing from Accel and South Park Commons.

Those overlapping investor networks helped open the door to conversations that eventually led to the deal. In AI, where talent and research direction can be as important as product metrics, those personal and financial connections often speed up strategic transactions.

How will the new research lab work?

The new lab will focus on adapting presentation and communication styles inside AI models for different audiences and preferences. In other words, Gamma wants its software to generate not just content, but content that is shaped by context.

Mehta said the goal is to build a platform where a broad communication objective and a user’s stylistic preferences can both be satisfied. The idea is that users would receive a strong first draft and then refine it for specific audiences, instead of starting from scratch.

That vision matters because presentation quality is often about nuance. An investor deck, an internal strategy memo and a customer-facing pitch may all require the same underlying facts, but the tone, visuals and structure should be very different.

• Personalized output for different audiences
• Editing tools that preserve strong first drafts
• Models tuned for visual communication, not only text generation
• Exploration of interactive and multimodal presentation formats

Why does this acquisition matter for the AI design market?

The acquisition matters because it shows how AI design companies are moving beyond isolated features and toward platform strategies. In the early phase of the market, startups often compete by making one task easier, such as generating slides or images. As the technology matures, the winners may be the companies that can connect those tasks into a cohesive workflow.

Gamma’s move also reflects a broader strategic shift in AI: the companies with the strongest distribution are trying to pair reach with deeper technical differentiation. By acquiring Lica, Gamma is buying more than product capabilities; it is acquiring a research mindset that could influence future product directions.

The deal also points to an increasingly competitive environment for standalone startups. Once a category becomes attractive, larger AI companies can move quickly to internalize promising teams, technologies and use cases. That can make it harder for younger companies to build independent scale, but it can also create attractive exit opportunities.

Timeline of the companies and the deal

The following timeline shows how quickly both companies developed and how the acquisition fits into the broader acceleration of the category.

What happens next?

The most immediate question is whether Gamma can turn this acquisition into visible new products. The company has not disclosed a launch timeline or described specific features that will come out of the research lab.

Still, the direction is clear. Gamma is trying to move from a strong presentation app into a broader creative and communication platform powered by AI. If it succeeds, the result could be a product that not only helps users make decks faster, but also changes how people create and adapt visual messages across channels.

For now, the deal signals that the AI presentation market is entering a second act. The first was about making slide creation easier. The next may be about reimagining what visual communication looks like when AI is built into the entire process.

Key facts at a glance

Here is a concise summary of the acquisition and the companies involved.