By
Geoff Weiss
New
Every time Geoff publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider’s
Terms of Service and
Privacy Policy.
Follow Geoff Weiss
- Shraman and Shreyas Kar dropped out of Stanford to attend Y Combinator.
- They have raised $4.1 million in seed funding for their AI startup, Golpo.
- Golpo generates animated explainer videos from documents and prompts.
Shraman and Shreyas Kar have built projects together since they were kids.
Now, after dropping out of Stanford, the brothers, 19 and 20, are launching their first company.
Golpo AI — born out of their research at Stanford's AI Lab — generates animated explainer videos from documents and prompts. Customers can use these videos for education, corporate learning, sales, marketing, and more.
The Kars' entrepreneurial journey began when as young boys, they received an Arduino kit for building electronic projects. Throughout middle and high school, they participated in hackathons. Both were studying computer science at Stanford when an application to Y Combinator changed their lives.
"Seeing that our peers were taking that risk to drop out of Stanford to start their own thing — that really motivated us and gave us permission," Shraman Kar, Golpo's CTO, told Business Insider.
Golpo, which means "stories" in Bengali, has raised a $4.1 million seed round led by BNVT Capital, with participation from Emergence Capital, Y Combinator, and Afore Capital. The company plans to use its funding to hire sales staff and invest in marketing.
From OpenAI's Sora to Veo, AI video is having a moment. Golpo focuses on longer videos designed for practicality. For example, customers can use Golpo to create interactive lessons for school districts or training programs for work. Golpo's whiteboard-style videos can last up to 30 minutes in length.
"Existing AI video tools really struggle with even spelling a word correctly, let alone creating a 10-minute end-to-end video explaining how multivariable calculus works," Shraman Kar said.
Golpo is growing fast. To date, 14,000 people have generated videos, Shraman Kar said. Customers include the Garnet Valley School District in Pennsylvania and offices within EY, with more demand coming internationally.
Golpo generates revenue through subscription plans, priced based on the number of generations, as well as other features, such as frame-by-frame editing and interactivity.
Here's a look at the pitch deck Golpo AI used to raise its $4.1 million seed.
Read next
Your daily guide to what's moving markets — straight to your inbox.
