DeepCraft

The Armenian company DeepCraft specialized in video and image processing. Its co-founders, General Director Armen Abroyan and Technical Director Vardges Hovhannisyan, have been engaged in artificial intelligence and machine learning for more than 20 years and are well known for their experience. Abroyan previously served as Deputy Minister of High Technology Industry of the Republic of Armenia, leading architect of AI at Redkite and senior software developer at Synopsys. Hovhannisyan spent 13 years as a senior research and development engineer at Synopsys.

History

2021: PicsArt bought DeepCraft

December 2, 2021 PicsArt, a digital creativity platform sponsored by SoftBank and joined the ranks of unicorns in August 2021, announced the acquisition of the research company DeepCraft. The acquisition is a combination of cash and shares totaling about $7 million. The exact terms of the transaction were not announced.

PicsArt was founded in 2012 by Hovhannes Avoyan and has been developing video editing software since its market debut in 2018, when it bought EFEKT (formerly D'efekt). The use of the creative platform has PicsArt increased sharply since 2020, especially as influencers in social networks and e-commerce companies switched to video format.

PicsArt acquired DeepCraft

In DeepCraft, the team worked with a number of clients on a contractual basis, including, Krisp PatriotOne, and even with the government. Armenia The team will now start working from the PicsArt offices in. In Yerevan total, the entire DeepCraft team, consisting of eight senior machine learning video engineers, will join the PicsArt as full-time employees as a result of the deal.

With DeepCraft, PicsArt is particularly interested in how the team's skill set and technological experience can help it move forward in supporting a video that the company says will receive a lot of attention in 2022.

However, PicsArt does not acquire a specific IP address from DeepCraft as part of this transaction, the company said. PicsArt already had a relationship with DeepCraft before the conclusion of the deal, as they collaborated in various technological developments.

DeepCraft is a unique team of deep technology engineers, and we have been working with them for more than a year to create our main technologies, "said Artavazd Megrabyan, co-founder and technical director of the PicsArt. "Since we are investing even more in the development of our video capabilities, we are confident that the DeepCraft team will play a significant role in building the future video," he added.

The deal with DeepCraft is the first acquisition from PicsArt since attracting its $130 million Series C round in August. Thanks to this round, the company received unicorn status compared to its previous estimate of about $600 million in 2019.^[1]

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