Snapchat bought Bitmoji’s personalized avatar stickers for around $100 million, and just today integrated them with its main app. Snapchat acquired Looksery and its animated selfie lenses for a reported $150 million. PrismAcquisition?Ī more sensible fate might be what recently happened to several other creative tool startups. Still, it could be cloned and undercut if it tries to monetize too aggressively. It has a strong head-start in the AI photo art space, and Prisma is becoming synonymous with the transformations. That means in its current state, its best bet for earning money would be selling additional filters. It also makes it super-quick to share to Facebook or Instagram. That growth’s been fueled by a “Prisma” watermark it puts on photos that most people don’t seem to realize you can turn off in the app’s settings. Prisma has already climbed to become the #10 US app overall, and the #3 Photo and Video app, according to App Annie. His team evolved their own version that could return a finished masterpiece in seconds so it’d work on mobile. Moiseenkov originally found an open source artificial intelligence algorithm that turned photos into classic art, but they took hours to process. It launched a month ago, and was profiled early by TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas. I could spend hours running my old pics through its filters that make simple selfies and landscapes seem special. When asked if it will buy Prisma, Facebook tells me “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.” Next-Gen Creation Tools Days before Facebook acquired MSQRD, Facebook execs were spotted playing with it at HQ. That might suggest that Facebook could acquire them. Prisma doesn’t even offer video filters yet but says it’s working on them.
In fact, Moiseenkov was at Facebook HQ this week where he showed off what looks like Facebook Live somehow running with a Prisma filter. By the end of the week I think we can discuss more”, signaling that some kind of deal is imminent. When I asked Prisma co-founder and CEO Alexey Moiseenkov what’s going to happen, he told me “For now I can’t disclose all this information.
But what will be the fate of this red-hot social product? We’ve heard Prisma is in talks with investors about raising funding, but it might make more sense as an acquisition for Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat.
#PRISMA APP INSTAGRAM APK#
Today it came out in unofficial APK beta on Android. “I can get more done by staying here.”įollow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, and listen to the daily #TalkingTech podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.Prisma morphs your photos into fine art like Picasso or Mondrian, and it’s blowing up the iOS app charts. “The traffic is Moscow is really bad,” says Airapetyan. Silicon Valley is that “it’s cheaper,” and “all our friends are here,” who they could tap to work, he said.Īirapetyan and co-founder/CEO Alexy Moiseenkov have a team of 15 people working with them, including two staffers in an office in San Francisco, but the co-founders spend most of their time working from their apartments. The advantage of starting the firm in Russia vs. “We’re just normal, kind people, just trying to bring some cool features to the tech industry worldwide,” he says. What does Airapetyan want us to know about the Russian tech scene? presidential campaign on behalf of the Russian government. Instead, they usually concern hackers thought to have meddled with the U.S. So this is a big win for the Russian tech community, which hasn't exactly been garnering positive headlines of late here. Most picks for app of the year (like last year’s Periscope, or Duolingo in 2014) are based in the United States.