Vertical AI Innovations: Abacus LLM in Finance & Synthesia's Video Avatars | E2112
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s show: Alex interviews founders from Abacus and Synthesia—two companies leading the charge in vertical AI. Abacus is deploying on-prem LLMs to banks and insurers with a focus on data control, accuracy, and integration with legacy infrastructure. Synthesia just hit $100M ARR by helping 70% of the Fortune 100 turn internal documents into scalable AI video. If you're interested in how generative AI is moving from hype to real enterprise utility, this one's for you.
Timestamps:
(0:00) Introduction to vertical AI with Abacus and Synthesia(1:57) Real-world applications of AI in regulated industries & Interview with Abacus founder David Moscatelli(5:02) Unique challenges for banks and credit unions using AI & Abacus OS private LLM(9:56) Atlassian - Head to https://www.atlassian.com/startups/twist to see if you qualify for 50 free seats for 12 months.(11:57) Abacus features, benefits, and customer acquisition strategies(12:27) Decentralized indexer, data integration, and voice AI technology with VAPI(19:58) Vapi - Go to vapi.ai/twist and get 1000 minutes free per month - for life.(24:47) On-premise setup, combating AI hallucinations, and trust in AI responses(30:08) Hubspot for Startups - Visit hubspot.com/startups and join the founders who are turning growth challenges into opportunities.(33:40) Abacus company growth, fundraising, and sales hiring(38:25) Introduction to Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli, AI avatars, and building a startup in Europe(41:34) Synthesia’s market positioning, target use cases, and personalized avatars(46:33) Synthesia's training data, partnerships, and improvements in AI avatar technology(55:57) Synthesia’s growth, Fortune 100 companies usage, and financial aspects(1:00:21) AI model competition, market appetite, and enterprise focus(1:02:09) Future of AI in video creation, ethicalconsiderations, and Synthesia's plans
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Check out:
Abacus: https://www.goabacus.co/
Synthesia: https://www.synthesia.io/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
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Thank you to our partners:
(9:56) Atlassian - Head to https://www.atlassian.com/startups/twist to see if you qualify for 50 free seats for 12 months.
(19:58) Vapi - Go to vapi.ai/twist and get 1000 minutes free per month - for life.
(30:08) Hubspot for Startups - Visit hubspot.com/startups and join the founders who are turning growth challenges into opportunities.
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Twist. This is Alex and I have two amazing interviews for you on this |
| 0:05.7 | very fine Tuesday. Thematically, they are linked because we are talking about the application of |
| 0:10.9 | AI to particular sectors. This is often called vertical AI, kind of building off the idea of |
| 0:16.7 | vertical SaaS, but taking generative AI tools and applying them to one particular industry. |
| 0:21.6 | First up, we're going to talk to Abacus. |
| 0:23.6 | Now, this company wants to bring Gen AI into regulated industries, think credit unions, banks, and insurance |
| 0:29.6 | companies. |
| 0:30.6 | It's very interesting to hear how they're going about approaching that market, and it's |
| 0:34.6 | quite different than other AI-first companies and how they're going after |
| 0:37.5 | their own markets, especially if they're more consumer oriented. |
| 0:41.1 | Then second, we're going to talk to Synthesia, a company that I actually demoed on the show a |
| 0:45.4 | couple months back. |
| 0:46.4 | They're a Twist 500 company, and they're working on basically video-generated AI models of people |
| 0:52.9 | for things like trainee videos and so forth. |
| 0:55.1 | Well, they have a pretty important revenue milestone to talk about and some very cool |
| 0:58.2 | technology, and they have notes on where people are buying Gen. |
| 1:02.3 | AI technology inside the enterprise today. |
| 1:04.8 | So if you're a little tired about hearing about the newest model this and the newest benchmark |
| 1:08.7 | that, I want to know where does the rubber meet the road? |
| 1:11.8 | Well, here you go. |
| 1:13.7 | Let's start with Abacus. |
| 1:17.1 | This weekend Startups is brought to you by Atlassian. |
... |
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