Presentation startup Gamma has acquired Accel-backed design startup Lica, with plans to establish a dedicated design research division, TechCrunch exclusively reported on August 25, 2026. Lica’s co-founders will lead the new research team.
Lica was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta. The company began as an app that converted screenshots and recordings into presentations and videos, before shifting its focus toward creating marketing videos for e-commerce clients that follow brand guidelines. In 2024, Lica raised $4 million from investors including Accel, South Park Commons, and Village Global.
The acquisition was driven by a shared vision between the two companies. Kalyanaraman noted that both firms are backed by Accel and South Park Commons, which facilitated early conversations with Gamma CEO Lee Grant. “We have a very similar North Star vision of wanting to make visual communication easy,” she told TechCrunch, adding that Gamma’s distribution reach — over 100 million users — made joining forces a logical step given the pace of change in the industry.
The new research division will focus on expanding what presentations can look and feel like, exploring multimodal and interactive communication formats. Mehta said the team aims to build a platform that personalizes communication and presentation styles for different audiences. “You just get a really good output, and then you’re able to edit for different audiences,” she said.
Gamma did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition or specify which products may result from it. The company said it will continue to prioritize presentations as its core use case while also exploring image generation and other communication formats.
The deal reflects broader consolidation in the AI presentation space. Gamma previously raised $68 million at a $2.1 billion valuation, Prezent raised $50 million across two rounds, and OpenAI acquired NextSlide earlier in August 2026.
Source: TechCrunch