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  • BlackRock-backed Minute Media acquires Indian AI startup that extracts sports highlights

    BlackRock-backed Minute Media acquires Indian AI startup that extracts sports highlights

    BlackRock- and Goldman Sachs-backed media startup Minute Media, which owns properties like Sports Illustrated, The Players’ Tribune, and 90 Minutes, announced Monday that it is acquiring VideoVerse, an Indian AI startup that lets broadcasters extract highlights and create content from sports footage. VideoVerse’s clients include the Indian Premier League and Women’s Premier League (cricket) tournaments, FIFA+, and broadcasters Nippon TV and Clubber TV.

    Mumbai-based VideoVerse was founded in 2016 by Vinayak Shrivastav, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil. The company is backed by Bluestone Equity Partners, A91 Partners (a fund by former Sequoia India execs), Alpha Wave, Evolvence India, and Moneta Ventures, and have raised $105 million in funding to date.

    While Minute Media or VideoVerse didn’t provide a valuation for the deal, sources told TechCrunch that VideoVerse was valued between $200 million and $250 million during its last round in 2023, and Minute Media’s deal was in a similar range.

    Minute Media CEO Asaf Peled said that VideoVerse’s acquisition is the biggest for the company in terms of both value and company size.

    Minute Media has largely grown through strategic mergers and acquisitions, including The Players’ Tribune, FanSided, Mental Floss, and STN Video.

    Shrivastav said that in its initial days, VideoVerse built multiple AI tools, including one to detect smoking and drinking, which was helpful for the Indian sensor board to flag certain scenes for movie certification. It also worked on object identification and deployed that tech for e-commerce sites for identifying items in a video. However, the startup transitioned to building video editing and detection tools for sports broadcasters.

    “In 2016, Hotstar (which is now owned by Jio) was growing, and they were looking for a solution that could identify certain action points in sports and primarily in cricket,” Shrivastav said about starting its sports journey.

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    A few years later, VideoVerse dropped its other products and concentrated on video-editing features for sports content.

    The company said that it operates like a SaaS tool for which it charges based on the number of hours of footage a broadcaster or streaming service wants to process. The company said it has grown to $65 million in revenue and a healthy EBIDTA margin of 35% to 40%.Image Credits:VideoVerse

    The company’s chief strategy officer, Prateek Sharma, said that VideoVerse has launched new AI-powered tools in the last few months that let its clients define rules to automatically generate content. For instance, for a basketball game, a broadcaster can create a package for all three-pointers scored by a particular player and automatically publish it on social media. The platform has also added AI-powered translation features to let sports properties reach fans across the globe.

    Sharma noted that while the platform uses third-party models in its AI workflows, the company uses its own core model to identify key moments in a game.

    Minute Media’s main reason behind the acquisition is to use VideoVerse’s tech and its own publisher network to better distribute content across various sports properties and generate ad revenue out of distributed content.

    The sports media company, which has raised $260 million according to Crunchbase data, said that the company reaches over 200 million monthly users through its properties. It also offers a B2B platform for content distribution, used by nearly 500 publishers. Minute Media’s Peled said that this presents a good opportunity to create more content through VideoVerse’s platform and monetize it.

    “With the VideoVerse acquisition, we can go to customers and pitch the AI suite, which is helpful for content creation. Then we can add our distribution and monetization capabilities on top of it to get more value out of the content,” Peled said.

    Minute Media wants to target more U.S.-based leagues with this new acquisition to get them to adopt the highlight-generating platform.

    Multiple reports suggest that fans are looking for a different kind of content outside traditional coverage, especially on their mobile phones. Minute Media is banking on AI to create that content. Peled said that while the company is not in an active funding round, it might look for more funds in the coming quarters for acquisitions.

  • Sacks, Chamath Describe 'Surreal' White House Dinner With Trump And Tech Elite

    Sacks, Chamath Describe 'Surreal' White House Dinner With Trump And Tech Elite

    President Donald Trump hosted a high-profile dinner at the White House, drawing a roster of Silicon Valley’s most influential leaders to discuss artificial intelligence and U.S. investment. The gathering included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, many of whom have publicly criticized Trump in the past. Elon Musk, once a close Trump ally, was notably absent, with scheduling conflicts and a public falling-out underscoring strains in their relationship.

    AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, both attendees of the dinner, offered an insider account of the event on the “All-In” podcast. “It started with a group that Chamath organized in Silicon Valley. They were the core nucleus, and then more and more people wanted to join,” Sacks said. “Pretty soon, the president invited the top tech leaders, and it turned into the room you saw. It’s pretty amazing—President Trump’s ability to convene all these folks. I’d say maybe half the tech industry was there by market cap.”

    Palihapitiya agreed with Sacks, explaining how being in that room “felt surreal.”

    “You’re seeing the leaders of the most important companies in the world, all sitting together, with this sense of alignment and cooperation. That was really cool,” Palihapitiya said. “These folks don’t have to show up anywhere, but the fact that the president could convene them says a lot about him and his agenda.”

    Palihapitiya said that attendees were “incredibly supportive” of Trump’s policies, which he contrasted with “the difficulties under Biden,” noting that, “Even hard-core liberals like Tim Cook and Bill Gates have now fully embraced President Trump.”

    “That’s a testament to his agenda,” he said.

    Palihapitiya then offered a play-by-play account of Trump hosting the tech leaders inside the Roosevelt Room. “You’re seeing the most powerful people who’ve built these incredible businesses—about 30 folks, but the table only fits 15. So you’ve got Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and Satya Nadella sitting on a couch, Dylan Field and Alan Wag nearby, just chilling,” Palihapitiya recounted. “In their own worlds, they’re kings, but in the White House, they’re American citizens there to meet the president. Everyone’s egos were checked.”

    “Then they had us line up single file – Sundar, Satya, Bill Gates – like we’re backstage at a Zeppelin concert,” he added.

    The group’s visit to the Oval Office added a ceremonial touch.

    A visit to the Oval Office added ceremony, with attendees like Oracle’s Safra Catz and her husband mingling for photos at the Resolute Desk. An impromptu moment came when Catz’s husband asked for a pen, prompting Trump to hand out challenge coins and pens. Google’s Sergey Brin sparked a policy discussion that carried into dinner, while an attendee’s request for Trump’s playlist led to Fleetwood Mac playing in the Rose Garden, as captured by AMD’s Lisa Su. The camaraderie, however, couldn’t mask the underlying tension: these leaders, once vocal critics, now appeared to prioritize access and influence over their past principles, casting doubt on whether their earlier opposition was genuine or merely posturing for public favor.

    The event raised questions about the motives of tech leaders who once opposed Trump. Zuckerberg, who banned Trump from Meta’s platforms in 2021 after the January 6 Capitol riot, had justified the move as a stand against incitement, drawing accusations of censorship from Trump’s supporters. In 2016, Zuckerberg criticized Trump’s immigration rhetoric as divisive during Meta’s F8 conference. Cook, a vocal advocate for social justice, opposed Trump’s 2017 travel ban, calling it “not the right approach,” while Altman compared Trump to “hateful” demagogues.

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