Descript Raises $50 Million Series C Led by OpenAI Startup Fund and Transforms Video Editing with New Product Release

Available today, redesigned app reinvents the video editor as a tool to sit alongside docs and slides in every communicator’s toolkit

Descript, the simple, powerful, full-workflow video and audio editor, today announces a $50 million Series C round led by OpenAI Startup Fund to support and accelerate AI integration into creativity. Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital and Daniel Gross also participated in the round.

In addition, Descript launches its biggest product update ever. Packed with more than 30 new visual and AI-powered editing features, the redesigned Descript promises to make editing video as easy as editing a doc or slides.

For too long, creators have been faced with a choice: Make video using simple tools with limited capabilities, or spend months if not years learning complex legacy tools that require extensive training. Descript removes these barriers, equipping creators and communicators with a single intuitive tool that’s also a fully-powered end-to-end production app.

“The stage is set for video to take its place alongside text as something everyone uses to create and communicate — the only things holding it back are the tools,” said Andrew Mason, CEO of Descript. “With the new Descript, we’ve replaced the drudgery of timeline editing with a tool that’s as familiar as the word processor — so you can make, edit, and share video without breaking your creative flow.”

Descript’s new editing magic starts with Scenes – a visual method for making video that’s as intuitive as making a slideshow. Scenes complement and compound the power of Descript’s core transcription-based editor, which already revolutionized podcast editing. Descript’s adaptability allows any creator, in any type of workflow, to create anything from a simple screen recording to a sophisticated narrative with multiple layers of video, b-roll, audio, with video and audio effects, transitions, and everything else they’d get from a more complicated legacy tool.

In addition to a complete redesign around scenes, Descript is launching over 30 powerful new features, including:

• Premium stock media: The tool now includes free access to millions of premium stock videos, images, sound effects and music tracks.
• Templates: Select from a gallery of great-looking layouts, title sequences and social clips. Or creators can make their own.
• Multitrack screen recording: Descript’s recorder is now integrated into the editor, with separate tracks for screen and camera.
• Green screen: Creators can put their videos in any setting they want with Descript’s AI background removal capabilities.
• Write mode: Creators can use Overdub to write their script in Descript while laying out visuals as they go. Then, they can choose one of the ultra realistic text-to-speech voices, or swap it out with their own recording.

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The core features, functionality and magic Descript is known and loved for all remain – including Overdub, Studio Sound, automatic filler word removal, easy social video clips, subtitles, screen and webcam recording, exporting & publishing, and collaboration.

Series C Financing Round
Descript’s new $50 million raise brings the company’s total funding to $100 million, and with it, brings the ability to amplify the implementation of AI to marry video, images and text into a new way of creating content.

“We started the OpenAI Startup Fund to accelerate the impact companies building on powerful AI will have on the world, and we’re particularly excited about tools that empower people creatively,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s COO and manager of the OpenAI Startup Fund. “It’s clear from using Descript and talking to customers that Descript is breaking down barriers between idea and creation by extending video editing capabilities to an entirely new class of creators.”

The OpenAI Startup Fund looks to invest in AI companies that have a profound impact on the world and can integrate the technology in useful ways in fields like healthcare, education and creativity. Descript’s interaction model for making video and audio content is the ideal receptacle for the coming explosion of AI-enabled content capabilities.

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