Whisper World and Rembrand merge to form AI video company WRLabs

Whisper World and Rembrand, which place brands into video after it is filmed, said on November 2 that they are merging to form WRLabs, with Whisper World founder Manav Kapoor as group CEO and co-chair.

The deal is largely stock-based and expected to close in January, according to Adweek. No price was disclosed. Omar Tawakol, Rembrand's CEO, becomes co-chair, and both CEOs stay in their current roles until the transaction closes, the companies said in a release.

The combined company keeps four business units and their names: Whisper World, Rembrand, Spaceback and MRFactory. The release lists three principal product lines, In-Content Advertising, Social Content Ads and Hybrid Virtual Studios, run by Whisper World, Spaceback and MRFactory respectively. Rembrand becomes the technology arm and is building VFXAgent, which the company calls "a coding agent for visual effects." WRLabs also plans to offer its AI editing platform through an API.

WRLabs reports about 450 employees across eight countries, roughly 3,000 advertisers, more than 100,000 in-content insertions and about two billion viewers a month, all company figures from the release.

"Whisper World has helped hundreds of advertisers extend their campaigns into new markets through a consistent, standardized approach to in-content advertising," Kapoor said in a statement. "By integrating Rembrand's AI platform, we can increase our production capacity dramatically, potentially delivering ten times the volume, while maintaining the precision, quality, and creative control our broadcast partners expect."

"We developed Rembrand to bring the power of AI to augment professionally produced video, without taking away the control or authenticity from the people who create the content," Tawakol said in the same statement.

Whisper World, founded in 2013, places virtual billboards into shots after the actors leave the frame, so directors do not have to sign off, Adweek reported. Placements sell as 15-second units and are measured in gross rating points through Kantar. Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble have bought the format for five years, Kapoor told Adweek, and Whisper World completes about 30,000 insertions a year. Rembrand's AI handles about 70% of them in South Africa and India.

Rembrand was founded in 2022 by Tawakol, who earlier sold BlueKai to Oracle and Voicea to Cisco, Adweek reported. It raised $23 million in a Series A in January 2025 and $31 million in total. Tawakol declined to give the current valuation, saying a roughly $80 million figure that has been reported dates to that round, when Rembrand had about $2 million in bookings; the company is now about 20 times that size.

The two companies met in June 2025 as partners, began merger talks that November and reached a definitive agreement this month, per Adweek. Rembrand merged with the social-ad company Spaceback in 2025, its own release said. Tawakol said no layoffs are planned.

For editors and post houses, the deal is a larger bet on augmentation: WRLabs says its tools change footage that already exists instead of producing new video from a prompt. VFXAgent, if it ships as described, would let editors give natural-language instructions to alter existing shots. No release date or price has been announced.

The deal is expected to close in January. WRLabs plans to raise money after the close, and Tawakol said an IPO is "absolutely" on the table.