TLDR: Lightricks, the Israeli company known for consumer-focused visual editing apps like Facetune, is undergoing a significant strategic pivot towards business-to-business (B2B) artificial intelligence solutions. This shift, driven by the rapid advancements in generative AI, sees the company leveraging its expertise in visual creativity to develop sophisticated tools for professional video teams and marketers, including its LTX Studio and the open-source LTX Video-13B model. The transition has also involved a restructuring, including layoffs in its consumer division, as Lightricks aims to redefine the future of creative work with AI.
Jerusalem, Israel – Lightricks, a prominent name in consumer-oriented visual content creation, is making a decisive strategic pivot towards the business-to-business (B2B) artificial intelligence sector. The company, founded in 2013 and known for popular mobile applications such as Facetune, Photoleap, and Videoleap, is now channeling its deep expertise in visual creativity into advanced AI tools designed for professional video teams, marketers, and content creators.
The catalyst for this significant shift emerged with the rapid advancements in generative AI, particularly the rise of models like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and DALL-E since late 2022. These innovations presented both a challenge and an opportunity for Lightricks, as their capabilities began to surpass some functionalities of Lightricks’ existing consumer app suite. Recognizing this evolving landscape, CEO Zeev Farbman identified a new direction: combining Lightricks’ visual creativity prowess with large language models to develop more powerful and accessible content creation tools for professional use.
“We were already putting powerful yet easy-to-use editing tools into the hands of everyone, so it made sense to apply business use cases,” stated Farbman. This vision has materialized in key offerings such as LTX Studio and the groundbreaking LTX Video (LTXV) model. LTX Studio is specifically targeted at professional marketers, social media influencers, ad production teams, and aspiring filmmakers. It provides access to robust video generation functionalities and a comprehensive suite of editing tools, streamlining the creation of high-quality, professional-looking videos and significantly reducing the need for expensive pre-production shoots.
Further solidifying its position in the B2B AI space, Lightricks unveiled LTX Video-13B in May 2025, an open-source video generation model featuring 13 billion parameters. This model boasts a breakthrough video compression capability that can reduce data size by a factor of 30, dramatically shortening video rendering times from up to 25 minutes to under a minute. Notably, LTX Video-13B can run on consumer-grade computers equipped with Nvidia graphics cards, reducing hardware costs by up to 90% through multi-scale rendering. Farbman emphasized the model’s significance, stating, “With this model, Israel isn’t just on the map—we’re competing with the giants.” While the model is currently open-source, Lightricks plans to apply licensing to users whose revenue exceeds $10 million, a strategic move to expand access while ensuring commercial viability.
The pivot has not been without its internal adjustments. As part of the transition, Lightricks implemented layoffs affecting 12% of its global workforce, approximately 70 employees, primarily within its consumer applications (B2C) division. The company plans to reallocate resources and recruit dozens of new AI experts, particularly in Israel, to support its new strategic direction. Despite these changes, Lightricks will continue to develop its flagship Facetune app, integrating deeper AI capabilities.
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Lightricks, which completed a $130 million fundraising round in 2021 at a valuation of $1.9 billion, is committed to its AI-first mission. The company has also forged partnerships, such as with Shutterstock, to train its models on licensed video data, ensuring robust and ethically sourced datasets. CEO Zeev Farbman believes this shift positions Lightricks uniquely to shape the future of creative work. “We’re moving towards a world where AI will augment every aspect of human creativity,” he concluded, “enabling enhanced personalization at a scale much greater than anything we’ve seen before.”
