Gamma is moving deeper into AI-assisted visual communication with the acquisition of Lica, a design startup backed by Accel. The deal gives Gamma a new design research lab, with Lica co-founders Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta set to lead the effort.
The acquisition comes as AI presentation tools attract major investor attention and begin to consolidate. For Gamma, the point is not only to keep improving presentation creation, but to examine what presentations and other communication formats could become as AI models handle more of the design and storytelling process.
Why Gamma wanted Lica
Lica began in 2023 as an app that transformed screenshots and recordings into project presentations and videos. A year later, the company raised $4 million from investors including Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global.
Its work later shifted toward e-commerce sites, where it helped create marketing videos that followed brand guidelines. That background matters for Gamma because it connects several problems at once: visual design, video, brand consistency, and communication that can be adapted for different audiences.
Kalyanaraman said Lica wanted to build AI models around communication methods, including video and design. She also said the Lica founders already knew Gamma CEO Lee Grant because both companies were backed by Accel and South Park Commons. Those conversations developed into the acquisition.
In Kalyanaraman's view, the two companies were working toward a similar goal. Lica had focused on research and making advanced capabilities usable, while Gamma had built distribution and brought its application to 100 million-plus users. The deal joins those strengths under one product and research direction.
A design research lab for visual communication
Gamma will keep working on presentations, which remain its core use case today. At the same time, the company has begun offering image generation, placing it closer to the broader set of design companies experimenting with AI-created visual output.
The new research division is meant to explore additional communication formats. Gamma said it wants to create fluid, multimodal presentations and other communication modalities, though it has not disclosed specific products resulting from the acquisition.
That leaves the immediate roadmap open, but the strategic direction is clear from the source: Gamma wants to investigate how people will build, view, edit, and interact with AI-generated communication. Grant framed the work around questions about how presentations should look and feel in the future, what visuals can be produced, and how interactive those materials can become.
This is broader than making slide decks faster. It points to a product category where the line between presentation, video, design file, and interactive communication may become less fixed.
Personalization is central to the plan
Mehta said the research division will work on customizing the presentation and communication styles of AI models for different audiences and tastes. That focus reflects a practical challenge for AI tools: a useful output is not just accurate or visually polished. It also has to match the people who will receive it.
In a business setting, the same goal may need to be expressed differently depending on the audience. A marketing team, a customer, an executive group, or an e-commerce buyer may all need different emphasis, pacing, visuals, and language. The source does not say which audience types Gamma will target first, but it does make clear that audience-specific editing is part of the thinking.
Mehta described the presentation as a way to communicate a large goal. The ambition, as described in the source, is a platform where that goal and the communication style can be personalized enough to produce a strong first output, which can then be edited for different audiences.
That helps explain why Lica's experience with marketing videos and brand guidelines could be useful inside Gamma. Brand-aware content and audience-aware presentations both require AI systems to respect constraints while still generating flexible visual communication.
AI presentation tools are drawing money and deals
The acquisition also fits a wider pattern in AI presentation software. Startups in the category have received significant investor attention and funding over the last few years.
- Prezent raised $50 million in two rounds.
- Gamma raised $68 million at a $2.1 billion valuation.
- Presentations.ai was also backed by Accel.
- Earlier this month, OpenAI acquired NextSlide.
Those examples show a market where both capital and consolidation are active. Gamma's purchase of Lica adds another data point: companies are not only competing on finished presentation tools, but also on the research needed to make AI-generated communication more visual, adaptive, and multimodal.
For users, the practical outcome may not appear immediately, since Gamma has not announced exact products from the acquisition. But the stated direction suggests future tools that go beyond static slides and offer more ways to generate, reshape, and personalize communication assets.
The acquisition gives Gamma a team already focused on AI, video, design, and brand-guided output. With Lica's co-founders leading the lab, Gamma is positioning its next phase around a larger question: what should presentation software become when AI can help shape not only the content, but the format itself?