Companies

LemonSlice

lemonslice.com

LemonSlice builds real-time interactive video avatars that give voice agents and chatbots expressive faces.

HQSan Francisco, California, United States
Employees1-50
Jobs checked 1h ago
Creative / MediaAI ApplicationB2B SaaS

About

LemonSlice is an AI research and product lab building real-time interactive video avatars that give voice agents and chatbots expressive faces. It sells self-serve video-generation products and APIs to creators, developers, and businesses; its differentiation is a general-purpose video diffusion model capable of generating personalized, conversational avatars in real time from a single photo.

Market

LemonSlice competes in the real-time conversational AI avatar and interactive-video market, combining a video foundation model with an API and platform layer for developers. It positions itself against more traditional talking-head and pre-trained-avatar offerings by generating avatars from a single image, supporting human, cartoon, stylized, and non-human characters, and enabling real-time interaction. Its principal differentiation is low latency plus programmatic control over emotion, motion, gestures, and appearance, making it oriented toward embedded AI products rather than only scripted video production.

Target Customers

Software developers and product teams at businesses building conversational AI agents or other interactive AI experiences that need a visual, embodied interface. The product is especially suited to teams integrating avatars into their own applications through an API or hosted widget, rather than to end consumers.

At a Glance

Problem

LemonSlice addresses the limitations of conventional chatbots, voice agents, and avatar tools: text boxes lack the attention and emotional connection of a face, while existing avatar systems often require uploaded videos, custom model training, or photorealistic human faces. That makes it difficult and expensive to create distinctive, interactive characters at production scale, especially for consumer products that need low-cost, high-volume interactions.

The clearest use case is a website-embedded video support or sales agent that can answer questions, explain products, demonstrate services, and handle many conversations at once. In economic terms, LemonSlice is selling greater support and engagement capacity—available 24/7 and simultaneously to multiple visitors—without requiring every interaction to be handled by a human.

Product / Service

LemonSlice provides an interactive-avatar platform and API. A developer can create an avatar from a single image, including a human, cartoon, animal, or object, connect it to an existing LLM or voice model, and embed the resulting real-time video agent in a website or product. Its LemonSlice-2 model is zero-shot, so users do not need to supply training footage; the company also offers an embeddable widget that can be added to a website with one line of code.

The product is delivered through self-serve subscriptions, API access, hosted video-agent experiences, and custom enterprise plans. The service emphasizes low latency, high concurrency, long calls, custom avatars, and the ability to bring a customer’s own language or voice model. Self-serve video agents start at $8 per month, while enterprise plans add features such as 1,000-plus concurrent sessions, longer calls, team accounts, model choices for different cost and quality requirements, and zero-data-retention options.

Market

LemonSlice competes in the emerging market for interactive video avatars, conversational AI interfaces, and infrastructure for video agents. Its target customers are software developers and businesses that already have a chatbot or voice agent but want to add a visual, expressive layer. The closest overlapping offerings include HeyGen’s interactive-avatar and video APIs, Tavus’s face-to-face conversational video agents, and D-ID’s talking-head generation API, although LemonSlice differentiates itself around real-time conversation, zero-shot animation from a single image, and support for non-human characters.

The company appears to be an early-stage, funded startup rather than a business with publicly disclosed revenue scale. Public traction includes a 2025 launch of LemonSlice-2, $10.5 million in seed funding from Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, and prominent individual investors, and a Y Combinator profile listing the company as founded in 2024, Winter 2024 batch, active, and staffed by eight people. The available public materials establish financing, product launch, and technical deployment evidence, but do not disclose customer counts or revenue.

Founders & Leadership

Lina ColucciFounder
CEO and Co-Founder
Sidney PrimasFounder
Co-Founder
Andrew WeitzFounder
Co-Founder

Funding History

2025-12
Seed$10.5M

Y Combinator, Matrix Partners

Recent News

2026-07-01partnership
Theodore Roosevelt Speaks Again: LemonSlice Powers a Life-Size, Conversational AI Avatar at the Opening of the New Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

LemonSlice announced that its technology powers a life-size, conversational Theodore Roosevelt avatar at the new presidential library. The exhibit was developed through a partnership with Microsoft and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

2026-06-25product
How we reduced avatar connection time by 76%

LemonSlice reported that median avatar connection time is now below three seconds and p99 connection time is below ten seconds. The company attributed the improvement to reductions in initialization and long-tail latency.

2026-06-18product
Improve your avatar images automatically

LemonSlice introduced automatic source-image recommendations that generate three variations after an image upload. The feature is designed to improve composition, framing, lighting, and portrait quality before avatar generation.

2026-05-28product
Multiple Live Avatars + Chrome Extension

LemonSlice showcased multiple live avatars and a Chrome extension that lets avatars comment on browser content without requiring a separate integration for each website or service.

2026-05-22product
LemonSlice Actions

LemonSlice launched Actions, which allow developers to programmatically trigger motion sequences for avatars during real-time calls.

2026-04-17product
LemonSlice 2.1 Flash

LemonSlice announced its 2.1 Flash video diffusion transformer and inference framework, optimized for low-latency interactive avatars. The release supports zero-shot generation from a single image, expressive gestures, and infinite-length generation.

2026-04-10product
LemonSlice 2.1

LemonSlice introduced version 2.1, positioning it as an interactive-avatar model with real-time controls such as waving, dancing, and emotional behavior. The company offered a free research preview and API access for developers.

2026-02-10partnership
LemonSlice x LiveKit

LemonSlice announced a LiveKit integration that lets developers embed LemonSlice avatars directly into their products through the LiveKit Agents framework. The announcement included free credits for the first 100 developers.

2025-12-23funding
Lemon Slice nabs $10.5M from YC and Matrix to build out its digital avatar tech

Lemon Slice announced a $10.5 million seed round involving Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, and other investors. The funding supports development of its real-time digital-avatar technology and Lemon Slice 2 model.

2025-12-18partnership
Lemon Slice launches real-time avatar agents powered by ElevenLabs

Lemon Slice launched an interactive avatar platform that turns an uploaded photo into a FaceTime-style conversational character. It partnered with ElevenLabs and integrated the ElevenLabs Agents Platform for voice activity detection, interruption handling, speech synthesis, tool calling, and knowledge-base connections.

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Business Model

LemonSlice monetizes through self-serve monthly plans, with pricing starting at $8 per month and usage costs as low as $0.039 per minute. It also offers an API for product integrations and enterprise support for high-volume applications.

Products

Video AgentsDeveloper Avatars APILemonSlice 2 real-time interactive avatar modelLemonSlice 2.1 Flash real-time avatar model and inference framework

Customers

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (publicly named deployment)

Tech Stack

Video diffusion transformers (DiT)Real-time video inference frameworks20-billion-parameter avatar modelsVAE decodingCUDA Graphs and GPU inferenceCoordinated CPU-GPU execution and asynchronous queue managementLLM, TTS, and STT integrations

Competitors

Tavus
HeyGen LiveAvatar
Simli
D-ID