Companies

Lamina Labs

laminalabs.ai

Lamina Labs turns prompts and documents into narrated whiteboard explainer videos through AI-powered video infrastructure.

HQSan Francisco, California, United States
Employees1-50
Jobs checked 17h ago
Creative / MediaAI ApplicationInfrastructure

About

Lamina Labs builds Simi, an AI-powered visualization and video-generation platform that turns prompts, documents, and decks into narrated whiteboard explainer videos. It sells to creators, businesses, educators, and developers through an app and API, differentiating with near-real-time generation, support for videos from one minute to an hour, and 80+ languages.

Market

Lamina Labs competes in generative AI video, EdTech content creation, and enterprise learning/training software, positioning itself as a visualization layer and near-real-time structured-video infrastructure for AI-native products. Its differentiation is a prompt- or document-to-narrated whiteboard workflow that writes the script, draws and animates the explanation, and exposes the capability through APIs, SDKs, and MCP; this contrasts with competitors focused more heavily on templates, customizable animated assets, or presenter/avatar-based videos.

Target Customers

Lamina Labs targets students and self-learners, course creators, customer-education and L&D teams, agencies, and EdTech or AI-agent companies that need to produce explanation-heavy video at scale. The primary organizational buyers are likely EdTech product/developer teams, instructional-design and training leads, and course-content creators seeking API-based or automated video generation.

At a Glance

Problem

Most AI video is optimized for cinematic clips, while the videos organizations actually need are practical explainers: training modules, onboarding flows, product walkthroughs, lessons, and sales content. Producing those videos today often means paying an agency thousands of dollars and waiting weeks, or spending hours in a template editor. That economics breaks down when a company needs hundreds of videos, frequent updates, or localization into many languages. Lamina Labs’ clearest use case is turning existing SOPs, policies, compliance documents, product documentation, or course material into short, understandable training and onboarding videos at scale.

Product / Service

Lamina Labs describes itself as a visualization layer for AI, with Simi as its first product. Users can submit a prompt, deck, document, or script, and Simi writes the script, creates illustrations, animates them, adds narration, and returns a finished whiteboard-style explainer rather than a draft. It can generate videos from roughly one minute to an hour in a single shot and supports more than 80 languages, making it useful for education, customer onboarding, internal training, product walkthroughs, sales, and marketing.

The delivery model combines a self-serve application with developer infrastructure. Simi offers HTTP API access, Python and Node SDKs, and an MCP server so agents and other applications can generate videos directly. Individual plans range from $19.99 to $99.99 per month, while the Business tier offers branding, custom voice, API access, and volume pricing. The intended benefit is to make structured, narrated video faster, cheaper, and scalable enough to serve whenever an AI system or business user needs an explanation.

Market

Lamina Labs competes in AI video generation and visualization infrastructure, initially targeting education, corporate learning and development, customer onboarding, product education, and high-volume explainer production. Its positioning is narrower and more functional than cinematic text-to-video: the company is building near-real-time, structured video infrastructure for LLMs so that models, agents, and applications can explain concepts visually. The practical competitive set includes general-purpose AI video or model products such as Claude Fable and GPT-5.5 Pro, as well as adjacent whiteboard and template-based video tools including Renderforest, Animaker, Powtoon, InVideo, Adobe Animate, and CapCut; these are adjacent alternatives rather than a formally disclosed list of direct competitors.

The company has early paid traction rather than being purely pre-revenue. A report stated that Simi had reached 4,000 users and 187 paying customers just twelve days after launch, although no revenue figure was disclosed. As of the current company announcement, Lamina Labs has raised $4.8 million in a round led by Foundation Capital with participation from Link Ventures and Y Combinator. It is an active Spring 2026 YC company, and the funding and early customer adoption indicate that it is moving from an initial education-led wedge toward broader enterprise, creator, agency, and API infrastructure markets.

Founders & Leadership

Kartikesh MishraFounder
Co-founder and CTO
Sudip RokayaFounder
Co-founder

Funding History

2026-03
Seed$125K

Y Combinator

2026-06
Seed$3.0M

Y Combinator

2026-07
Seed$4.8M

Foundation Capital

Recent News

2026-07-02product
Y Combinator: Lamina Labs is building the fastest infrastructure for explainer videos

Y Combinator highlighted Lamina Labs’ infrastructure for turning prompts and documents into whiteboard-style explainer videos in seconds. The post says Simi supports more than 80 languages.

2026-06-22funding
Lamina Labs YCombinator Funding: Nepali MIT Founders Secure $3M After Stunning Demo Day Debut

Entrepreneur Loop reported that Lamina Labs raised an additional $3 million after its Y Combinator Demo Day, on top of the $500,000 YC investment. The company planned to use the capital to hire engineers and scale Simi.

2026-06-21funding
Nepali AI startup Lamina Labs secures $3M for video explainer tool Simi

Dealroom reported that Lamina Labs secured $500,000 from Y Combinator plus an additional $3 million. Twelve days after launch, Simi reportedly had 4,000 users and 187 paying customers, with the founders planning to hire engineers and scale the platform.

2026-06-08
Lamina Labs - The YC Tier List

A YC-focused profile described Lamina Labs as building fast visual infrastructure for EdTech AI applications, allowing students to receive accurate visual explanations from simple text prompts in seconds.

2026-05-28product
Simi by Lamina Labs: Whiteboard Explainer Videos From Prompts and Documents

This product coverage described Simi as an AI explainer studio that converts prompts or uploaded documents into whiteboard-style videos for students, course creators, training, and EdTech products. It also covered Lamina’s developer API and agent-stack integrations, including use through lamina-sdk and api.laminalabs.ai.

2026-03-10product
Simi: The Fastest AI Whiteboard Explainer Video Generator

Lamina Labs’ Y Combinator company page announced Simi as its first product, turning prompts or documents into narrated whiteboard explainer videos in seconds. The page says the product is available through both an app and an API for training, onboarding, product walkthroughs, sales, marketing, and education.

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Business Model

Lamina Labs monetizes Simi through paid subscription plans, including a Pro plan listed at $49.99 per month for 18,000 credits. API access is included in Max and Business plans, with API usage billed at three times the normal credit rate.

Products

Simi AI explainer studioSimi HTTP API for prompt- and document-to-video generationPython and Node.js SDKs for programmatic generationRemote MCP server for agent-based video generationUnderlying near-real-time structured video-generation infrastructure

Tech Stack

LLM-powered generative video pipelineStructured or deterministic whiteboard animation and video renderingPrompt and document groundingAutomated scriptwriting, illustration, animation, narration, and multilingual voice generationHTTP API with Python and Node.js SDKsMCP server for agent integrations

Competitors

StudyFetch
Powtoon
Animaker
Synthesia
HeyGen