The Paris scale-up teaching companies to make video the way they write email - fast, on-brand, and in-house.
Before PlayPlay, the request "can we get a video for this?" set off a familiar chain of events inside most companies: a brief, an agency call, a quote, three weeks, and an invoice that made anything shorter than a product launch feel wasteful. Video was treated like a special occasion. PlayPlay's founders bet it could become a habit.
Founded in Paris in 2017 by Thibaut Machet, Aurelien Dayres and Clement Moracin, PlayPlay is a browser-based video creation platform aimed squarely at the people who need video most but were never trained to edit it - communication, marketing and HR teams. Machet had felt the pain directly as a social-media director at Eurosport, watching a demand for video collide with the reality of clunky editing software.
The product's premise is narrow and deliberate: take the 90% of a corporate video that is format - the intros, lower-thirds, captions, brand colors, aspect ratios - and automate it, so a non-editor spends their time only on the 10% that carries the message. A user drags together templates, drops in footage or a text prompt, and PlayPlay handles subtitles, resizing and on-brand styling. The company likes to say the finished video takes about fifteen minutes.
Trusted by over 3,000 companies for product launches, executive announcements, employee updates and more.
That focus has attracted an enterprise roster that includes IBM, L'Oreal, Booking.com, Schneider Electric, Novo Nordisk, the NHS and Unilabs, spread across roughly fifteen countries. Investors followed the traction: a EUR 10M Series A led by Balderton Capital in 2020, then a $55M Series B led by New York's Insight Partners in 2022, bringing total funding to around $65.8M.
PlayPlay is a subscription platform, not a service. Teams log in and build videos themselves: drag-and-drop templates, a premium Getty Images stock library, automatic resizing for LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and more, and a layer of AI that has grown steadily since 2023.
The AI Video Suite drafts a first cut from a text prompt, generates voice-over, writes and burns in subtitles, removes backgrounds and cleans audio. AI Avatars produce lifelike talking-head presenters with no filming. An AI Translator localizes videos across languages, and AI Clipping slices long recordings into short social clips. In 2025 the company extended beyond video with PlayPlay Design, turning prompts into on-brand images and animations.
Series A led by Balderton Capital; Series B led by Insight Partners. Figures approximate, per public reports.
Drag-and-drop editor with professional templates, stock library and auto-resizing across social formats.
Since 2017Prompt-to-video assistant, AI voice-over, auto-subtitles, background removal and audio cleaning.
Since 2023Lifelike digital presenters with natural speech and expression - talking-head videos with no camera.
Since 2024Localize a video into other languages and auto-cut long recordings into short social clips.
Since 2024Text prompts become on-brand images, animations and edits - extending the platform beyond video.
Since 2025Locked templates, brand kits, shared libraries and approval workflows to keep output consistent at scale.
Since 2020The crowded video-tool market splits roughly into avatar-first players like Synthesia, design-first platforms like Canva, and animation tools like Vyond, Powtoon and Animoto. PlayPlay's differentiator is who it is built for: the comms manager producing the fiftieth internal update this quarter, not the marketer chasing one viral hit.
That is why its enterprise features - locked templates, brand kits and approval workflows - arrived alongside, not after, its AI. The insight is that large organizations do not fear AI making video; they fear AI making off-brand video at scale. PlayPlay's pitch, roughly 10x cheaper than an external agency, is aimed at replacing the agency invoice and the three-week wait with an in-house habit.
Alternatives & competitors:
Thibaut Machet, Aurelien Dayres and Clement Moracin launch an easy online video maker for business teams.
Early funding lands and communication and marketing teams begin signing on.
Balderton Capital leads, with Point Nine and Kerala Ventures, to expand across Europe.
Insight Partners leads with Balderton to scale enterprise video and open a New York office.
Avatars, translation, clipping, voice-over and auto-subtitles arrive across the platform.
The platform moves beyond video into AI-generated on-brand images and animations.
Co-founder and CEO. Former social-media director at Eurosport, where the video pain point that inspired PlayPlay first surfaced.
Co-founder, part of the original trio that launched PlayPlay in Paris in 2017.
Co-founder, helping build one of Europe's faster-growing B2B SaaS scale-ups.
Create on-brand videos and images effortlessly, thanks to powerful AI features - no editing skills required.
PlayPlay is an online platform that lets business teams create professional, on-brand videos using drag-and-drop templates and AI tools, without any editing skills.
Communication, marketing and HR teams at 3,000+ companies - including IBM, L'Oreal and Booking.com - use it for announcements, recruitment ads, product launches and internal updates.
Roughly $65.8M in total, including a $55M Series B led by Insight Partners in 2022 and an earlier EUR 10M Series A led by Balderton Capital.
It was founded in 2017 in Paris by Thibaut Machet (CEO), Aurelien Dayres and Clement Moracin. Machet previously led social media at Eurosport.
It competes with tools like Synthesia, Canva, Vyond, Powtoon, Animoto and InVideo, as well as traditional video agencies and freelance editors.
Sources: PlayPlay.com, PR Newswire, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners, TechCrunch, Crunchbase, PitchBook, G2 and Capterra. Funding and headcount figures are approximate and drawn from public reporting.