Wibbitz

The idea: an article that becomes a video

Wibbitz was founded in 2011 by Zohar Dayan and Yotam Cohen. In its very first years it offered something that sounded like science fiction at the time: take an article, a blog post or a news feed and automatically turn it into a short video. In June 2012, Adweek reported a $2.3 million Series A round for the company, led by Li Ka-shing's Horizons Ventures with participation from Initial Capital and lool ventures. This was a decade before text-to-video became a central field of generative AI.

How the automation worked

According to TechCrunch in 2013, the platform relied on natural language technology, artificial intelligence and algorithms to turn text into videos automatically. According to Vox in 2017, a publisher could let the system do everything and get a video from an already published article within about ten seconds, or edit it themselves. According to the company, creating a video "semi-automatically" took 6.8 minutes on average. At the time, the company reported 400 customers, including Reuters, Time Inc. and Hearst, who together produced about 20,000 videos a month. Vox described the output as "gets-the-job-done videos," with a basic script, flat narration and music that doesn't always fit.

Investors and customers

According to Calcalist, by 2021 the company had raised about $30.8 million. Alongside venture capital funds, its investors included strategic customers: the AP news agency, the media group Bertelsmann, the French TV network TF1 and The Weather Channel. The company had offices in New York, Tel Aviv and Paris, and its customers included Bloomberg, HubSpot, Condé Nast and Harvard University.

From automation to an enterprise video suite

Over the years, Wibbitz moved away from publishers and from full automation. In the 2021 acquisition announcement it was described as "a leading enterprise video creation suite" for marketing, internal communications and media teams, with branded templates, approval workflows and shared workspaces. According to TechCrunch, the company still offered its AI tool for turning text into video at the time, but it was no longer the core of the service.

The Vimeo acquisition

On 10 November 2021, Vimeo, the American video platform, announced agreements to acquire Wibbitz and the London-based company WIREWAX. According to Vimeo's annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the acquisition of 100% of Wibbitz's shares was completed that same day. The deal amount was not published. Calcalist reported that it was significantly less than the $30 million the company had raised, and called it an "underwhelming exit." Thirty Wibbitz employees joined Vimeo's Israeli center in Ness Ziona (in 2019 Vimeo had also acquired the Israeli company Magisto). According to the report, Vimeo paid a total of $14.2 million in cash for the two acquisitions together, net of cash acquired, plus contingent consideration tied to targets.

What the story teaches

Wibbitz was early: it built automatic video creation when the tools for it were still crude, and the output looked and sounded that way. In the end, it was sold because of what had been built around the technology (templates, branding and teamwork), not because of the automation itself, which Vimeo's CEO said would be folded into products that already had a similar capability. It is a reminder that pioneering technology does not guarantee a business, and that a field can mature only after its pioneers have already been sold.