The startup raised $4 million in 2024 from investors including Accel, South Park Commons and Village Global. Kalyanaraman and Mehta were already familiar with Gamma CEO Lee Grant through shared investor networks, and conversations between the companies eventually led to the acquisition.
The two teams had been working on related problems from different directions. Lica was exploring AI models that could interpret and adjust different forms of visual communication, while Gamma had focused on expanding distribution for its presentation software. The acquisition brings those efforts together under a single research operation.
Gamma still considers presentations a core part of its product, but the company has started moving beyond traditional slide creation. It has added image-generation capabilities and plans to explore formats that could make presentations more interactive and multimodal.
The new lab will look at how visual communication might move beyond fixed slide sequences. Potential areas of research include dynamic layouts, richer combinations of media and presentation formats that change depending on how an audience interacts with the content.
Grant said Gamma wants to rethink both the structure of presentations and the way audiences engage with them. The company has not announced a specific product roadmap tied to the acquisition, so it is not yet clear when any of the lab’s work could reach users.
Another area of interest is personalization. Mehta said the group plans to study how AI models could adjust communication styles for different audiences, goals and preferences. That could allow a user to start with the same core message and generate different versions for investors, customers, employees or other groups. Rather than rebuilding each presentation manually, the user could modify an AI-generated version for the intended audience while preserving the original intent.
The acquisition comes as AI presentation startups continue to attract funding. Prezent has raised $50 million across two rounds, while Gamma has secured $68 million at a reported $2.1 billion valuation. Presentations.ai has also received funding from Accel.
For Gamma, the Lica deal extends its focus from presentation generation toward the broader problem of how AI can shape visual communication. The immediate result is a dedicated research group rather than a new customer-facing product, with Kalyanaraman and Mehta leading work on how AI-generated media could become more adaptive and audience-specific.
This analysis is based on reporting from nstartup.
Image courtesy of Gamma/Lica.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
