Gamma acquires design startup Lica to start a new research team

In short: Gamma, a company known for making presentations, has acquired design startup Lica and will use its team to build a new research division.

What happened

Gamma has acquired Lica, a startup that worked on turning screenshots and recordings into presentations and videos. Lica was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta.

Lica raised $4 million in 2024 from investors including Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global. In recent years, it focused on helping e-commerce companies make marketing videos that follow brand guidelines (company rules for how logos, colors, and messaging should look).

Gamma said it wants to build out an in-house design research lab. Lica’s co-founders will lead that effort as part of a new research team at Gamma.

Gamma will keep focusing on presentations. It has also started offering image generation, which means the software can create pictures from written prompts (like asking a tool to “draw” what you describe).

Gamma did not share specific new products or a purchase price. It did say it wants to explore “multimodal” presentations, meaning presentations that can mix formats like text, images, and video (like a slide deck that feels more like an interactive web page).

Why it matters

This deal is a sign that the market for AI-assisted presentation and design tools is maturing. For regular users, that can mean more tools that help you tailor the same message for different audiences, like making one version for a sales pitch and another for a classroom, without starting from scratch.

Source: TechCrunch AI