Gamma acquires Accel-backed design startup Lica
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta
Gamma bought Lica to build a design research lab. The real bet is on making presentations more visual, personal, and harder for rivals to copy.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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Gamma has bought Lica, the Accel-backed design startup, and plans to use its team to build a design research lab. Lica’s co-founders will lead that effort. The deal is less about folding in a single product than about pushing Gamma beyond slides and into the harder problem of visual communication itself.
Lica started as an app for turning screenshots and recordings into presentations and videos. Founded by Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta in 2023, it raised $4 million the following year from Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global. More recently, the startup had been working with e-commerce companies on marketing videos that stayed inside brand guidelines.
Kalyanaraman said the two companies were already familiar with each other’s leadership because both were backed by Accel and South Park Commons. Those conversations turned into an acquisition after the founders realized they shared the same goal: making visual communication easier, while one side focused more on research and the other on reaching a much larger audience. Gamma’s CEO, Lee Grant, said the company already reaches 100 million-plus users.
Gamma will keep its core presentation product, but it is also moving further into image generation and wants the new research division to explore new communication formats. Grant said the company wants to think about what presentations might become, how interactive they could be, and what kinds of visuals are possible. Mehta said the lab would work on tailoring presentation and communication styles for different audiences and tastes.
The timing makes sense. AI presentation startups have attracted serious money, with Prezent raising $50 million in two rounds and Gamma itself raising $68 million at a $2.1 billion valuation. And the space is starting to consolidate: OpenAI bought NextSlide earlier this month.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when a category stops pretending it’s just about slides. The money is clearly chasing whoever can make AI output look polished, branded, and slightly less embarrassing than average. OpenAI buying one slide shop and Gamma buying another feels less like strategy and more like everyone sprinting to own the same tidy little feature before it becomes table stakes.
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