Victor Riparbelli, the 34-year-old CEO of Synthesia, placed an early bet on AI-generated video years before ChatGPT pushed generative AI into the mainstream. He launched Synthesia in 2017 with a big ambition: helping people create film-style video content from a laptop. That vision was strong enough to attract investor interest, including from Mark Cuban.
But the CNBC profile makes clear that early belief from backers was not the same as immediate business success. Riparbelli said Synthesia went through about four years of only middling results, a reminder that being early in AI can be as challenging as it is promising. Building a market for AI video before the wider boom in generative tools meant the company had to keep searching for traction.
The turning point came when Synthesia made a major shift. While the trimmed report does not spell out every detail of that move, it presents the change as the moment that altered the company’s trajectory. In other words, the breakthrough was not simply raising money or having a futuristic idea, but recognizing when the original approach needed to evolve.
The story highlights a common startup lesson in the AI sector: convincing a famous investor can be easier than finding the right path to growth. For Riparbelli and Synthesia, betting on AI video ahead of the ChatGPT era mattered, but adapting after a slow start appears to have been the decision that truly changed the company’s future.
