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Anam builds digital humans that can have lifelike conversations. Read the pitch deck that it used to raise $9 million.

Anam builds digital humans that can have lifelike conversations. Read the pitch deck that it used to raise $9 million.

Anam has raised $9 million to build AI personas that can converse in real time.
The Redpoint-backed company was cofounded by two Synthesia veterans in late 2023.
Anam has 2,000 clients and is tracking $5 million in annual revenue, cofounder Caoimhe Murphy said.
Redpoint Ventures, with participation from SV Angel, led the latest round. Anam, founded in October 2023 and named for the Irish word for "soul," had previously raised a $2.3 million pre-seed led by Concept Ventures.
Today, Anam has 2,000 clients ranging across education, sales, customer support, healthcare, and beyond. The hair brand Schwarzkopf uses Anam as an education tool for stylists, for instance, while language learning platform Preply uses it to simulate learning environments.
Other competitors like Tavus and HeyGen are also trying to solve what is a vastly difficult technical problem, Anam cofounder and CEO Caoimhe Murphy told Business Insider — from flawless lip syncing to realistic facial movement to near-immediate response times to the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands of users.
"There's no real winner right now," she said of the race to build the highest quality product. "That's why the market's so exciting."
Anam generates every pixel of its avatars, Murphy said, as opposed to how other rivals may only partially generate avatars or use a video on loop and just dub the mouth.
"That's where real expressivity and natural conversation comes through," she said.
The company recently released a feature called One-Shot, which can generate an AI persona from a photograph in minutes.
Murphy and Ben Carr, Anam's cofounder and CTO, previously worked together at AI video unicorn Synthesia. Murphy worked in sales, and Carr worked as an AI research engineer.
Anam has 16 employees and is tracking $5 million in revenue this year, Murphy said. It makes money by charging per minute of conversation.
"They're building the next interface layer between humans and machines," Redpoint partner Meera Clark said in a statement.
Here's a look at the pitch deck Anam used to raise $9 million in seed funding. A slide has been redacted to share the deck publicly.
Three key bets have allowed us to solve this problem. We are the first company to develop a custom diffusion model and train it on specific data and we have built custom infrastructure to support delivery at speed and scale.
Our bets focused on the hardest components of the problem
We're changing the status quo
Use cases
Interview assistant -- leverage Anam's technology to practice interviews or even run them!
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How Eckhart Tolle Turned Stillness into a Multi-Million Dollar Empire
How Eckhart Tolle Turned Stillness into a Multi-Million Dollar Empire

Business Upturn

time11 hours ago

  • Business Upturn

How Eckhart Tolle Turned Stillness into a Multi-Million Dollar Empire

In an era where noise equals value and attention is currency, Eckhart Tolle's quiet empire stands as a paradox: a low-key spiritual teacher who turned stillness into scalable revenue. The German-born, Vancouver-based author is best known for his transformational bestsellers The Power of Now and A New Earth , but few realize the depth and structure of the Eckhart Tolle business model behind his serene public presence. This article peels back the layers of a multimillion-dollar operation that monetises presence, awareness, and peace — not through mass consumerism, but via publishing royalties, digital subscriptions, high-ticket retreats, and a strategically limited brand ecosystem. Here's how Eckhart Tolle built one of America's most financially efficient spiritual businesses without ever appearing overtly commercial. The Foundation of Eckhart Tolle's Business: Books, Brand, and Digital Presence Eckhart Tolle's rise to fame began with the self-published release of The Power of Now in 1997. It was quietly passed from hand to hand until Oprah Winfrey featured it on her book club in 2000, turning the title into an international sensation. His follow-up, A New Earth (2005), cemented his place in the upper echelon of global self-help literature. The real engine here wasn't just sales — it was brand crystallisation. Tolle's persona became inseparable from the experience of the books: minimalist covers, philosophical prose, and his calm media appearances all built a recognisable brand asset. By focusing on timelessness and simplicity, Tolle didn't just write spiritual books—he created a lifestyle identity, turning his name into a marketable intellectual property in the U.S. personal growth ecosystem. He never diluted his message through excessive appearances or rapid releases. This calculated scarcity made his content — and by extension, his brand — feel more premium and essential. Monetising Awareness: How Tolle's Publishing and Royalties Model Works Tolle's publishing contracts, initially with Namaste Publishing and later with Penguin Group and New World Library, are reportedly based on above-standard royalty agreements — a likely outcome of Oprah-backed demand and consistent best-seller performance. In traditional U.S. publishing deals, authors earn about 10–15% in royalties from hardcover sales and 7–10% from paperbacks, but high-performing titles like The Power of Now , which has sold over three million copies in the U.S. alone, can trigger escalator clauses, enhanced royalty splits, or even profit-sharing models. Given his status, it is reasonable to estimate that Tolle's U.S. royalty earnings exceed seven figures annually just from books alone. 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As of mid-2025, subscription pricing sits at: $19.95/month $149/year (a ~38% discount) Content is released monthly, creating evergreen media assets with high retention potential. Monthly Membership Dynamics and Digital Scalability This subscription model offers a masterclass in high-margin, low-overhead business operations. Unlike book publishing, which includes printing, distribution, and retailer margins, digital content has virtually zero unit cost after production. Let's assume a conservative estimate of 50,000 active U.S. subscribers — which aligns with mid-tier subscription benchmarks for niche spiritual platforms. At $19.95/month, that alone equates to $1 million monthly recurring revenue or $12 million annually, with minimal infrastructure costs. More importantly, the lifetime value of a subscriber—typically measured as customer longevity × monthly payment—is far higher than that of a casual book buyer. 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This might be the real reason Joel Engardio is facing recall in the S.F.'s Sunset District
This might be the real reason Joel Engardio is facing recall in the S.F.'s Sunset District

San Francisco Chronicle​

time13 hours ago

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OpenAI Raises $8.3 Billion at $300 Billion Valuation
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