Pioneering video AI startup continues to expand its senior advisory team, bringing a veteran media strategist on board as plans for growth accelerate

ShortTok, an early-stage software company pioneering the development of automated visual storytelling technologies, announced the appointment of Jim Kennedy as Strategic Advisor for Partnerships.

Kennedy comes to ShortTok with over three decades of experience at the Associated Press (AP), where he retired as senior vice president for strategy and enterprise development in 2022. In 2014, he pioneered the company’s first use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate the creation of narrative text from structured data sets in sports and financial market coverage. That breakthrough led to the introduction of a range of artificial intelligence technologies across the value chain of news reporting, production and distribution at AP.

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“A warm welcome to Jim, who brings deep expertise in product/market fit, product development, and corporate strategy to ShortTok,” said Vikram Nagrani, Founder & CEO of ShortTok. “Jim is joining at a pivotal point of growth for the company. He will guide ShortTok’s efforts to engage with senior leadership teams at global media companies looking for innovative solutions, having spent the bulk of his career in their shoes.”

“From my first introduction to Vikram, it was clear we shared a vision for how to unlock new value from video to advance multimedia storytelling,” Kennedy said. “ShortTok’s AI-based technology will not only make it easier to tell visual stories faster and better, but also create novel video experiences to delight consumers. I’m looking forward to pushing quickly into this new territory with their experienced team.”

Kennedy’s appointment marks the next phase of ShortTok’s trajectory, coming shortly after the company’s announcement of hiring Jayan Eledath, a former Director at AWS, as Chief Technology Officer in January 2023, and after securing financing commitments from Info Edge Ventures earlier in October 2022.

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