Elai.io was co-founded in 2021 by Ukrainian entrepreneurs Vitalii Romanchenko and Alex Uspenskyi, building an AI text-to-video platform focused on a specific niche: corporate learning and training content. Despite scaling through wartime conditions, Elai grew to more than 2,000 global customers — from medical device makers to hospitals, universities and software companies — and was acquired by US video-learning leader Panopto in October 2024, just three years after launch.
Product
Elai generates presenter-led videos from text without cameras or studios: 80+ stock avatars or custom personal avatars, voice cloning in 28 languages, and translation across 75+ languages with 450+ accents. Converters turn PowerPoint decks, URLs and articles directly into videos, while interactive avatar dialogs, screen recording and personalization-at-scale target L&D, compliance, sales training and customer education. A REST API automates video generation in bulk.
After the acquisition
Under Panopto, Elai's avatar and text-to-speech capabilities anchor generative video inside a broader corporate learning platform, with founder Romanchenko continuing as Panopto's Head of AI Product Strategy. The product remains available with a free trial.