By 
US-based AI interactive content company Flam is expanding into Nigeria through SmartSense Technologies, following a $40 million Series B funding round as it moves to transform how brands and consumers create, experience and interact with digital content.
RELATED: AI-powered wealth surge: Elon Musk adds $320 bn in 18 months as tech titans report 30-fold net worth increases
Flam, an artificial intelligence company focused on interactive content, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by QED Investors, with participation from Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel, Venky Harinarayan and Shah Rukh Khan.
ALSO READ: AI must strengthen, not replace electoral institutions, says INEC Chairman
Existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail also increased their investments in the latest funding round.
The expansion into Nigeria is being driven through SmartSense Technologies, which has been appointed Flam’s exclusive partner in the country.
The partnership comes as Nigerian brands and enterprises increasingly explore artificial intelligence, immersive digital experiences and personalised customer engagement in a market where mobile devices remain the primary gateway to digital services.
Flam Targets the Next Generation of Digital Content
Flam is positioning its technology around a fundamental shift in how people consume digital content.
While the internet has evolved from text to images and then video, most digital content remains largely passive: creators produce content and audiences consume it.
Flam wants to change that model by making content interactive, allowing users to respond to, manipulate and participate in digital experiences in real time.
“Flam is built on a simple observation. Content has moved in waves, from text to images to video, and every wave flowed one way, creator to viewer. We think interactive is the next default for the internet,” said Shourya Agarwal, Founder of Flam.
Adding:
“The demand was always there. The technology wasn’t. We have made interactivity effortless to build and deploy at enterprise scale.”
The company says it now has more than 100 enterprise customers globally, secured within six quarters. Its customers include major brands such as Google, Emirates and KFC.
Their applications range from marketing and product visualisation to learning and development, entertainment, fan engagement, customer support and sales.
SmartSense to Localise Flam for Nigerian Market
For Nigeria, the partnership with SmartSense is expected to focus on translating Flam’s technology into practical applications for local brands, agencies and enterprises.
Dr. Seyi, CEO of SmartSense Technologies, said Nigeria’s mobile-first market presents a strong opportunity for interactive AI content.
“Nigeria is an exceptionally mobile-first market, with brands and consumers that adopt new forms of digital engagement very quickly,” he said.
Adding:
“Flam gives brands the ability to move beyond passive content and create experiences people can interact with, respond to and participate in. Our role at SmartSense is to bring that capability into the Nigerian market, localise it for real business use cases, and help brands, agencies and enterprises deploy it at scale.”
The partnership could open new possibilities for Nigerian companies looking to use AI not simply to generate content, but to make digital experiences more responsive, conversational and personalised.
From Interactive Video to AI-Powered Visual Agents
Flam’s technology portfolio extends beyond conventional AI-generated images and video.
The company says it holds more than 15 patents and has developed three major content formats supported by a broader AI technology stack.
Its Flicks technology creates interactive videos capable of switching people, products or scenes during playback. Flam says its patented compression technology enables programmatic delivery with a 50-millisecond time-to-first-buffer.
Forge, its editing model, allows users to provide image references and modify only specified elements, potentially reducing the complexity involved in producing and adapting visual content.
The company’s Airboards are high-fidelity 3D experiences designed for camera interfaces, incorporating touch, voice and haptic interactions. Flam says its 3D streaming technology can load these experiences in about 300 milliseconds without requiring users to install an application.
AI Video Agents Could Change Customer Engagement
One of Flam’s more ambitious applications is its development of Visual Agents — human-like digital characters capable of holding conversations and taking what the company describes as agentic actions.
Instead of interacting with a conventional chat window, users can engage with a video-based digital character.
The company’s technology stack includes Fantom, which handles facial expressions through identity preservation and motion transfer; Finesse, which provides voice capabilities across languages; and Falcon, a 26-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts large language model designed to generate responses with a reported 30-millisecond time-to-first-token.
Flam says its technology pipeline can return an answer in less than two seconds.
For Nigerian businesses, such capabilities could have applications in customer service, digital sales, product demonstrations, education, entertainment, financial services and marketing.
Why Nigeria Matters to Flam’s Expansion
Nigeria’s large digital consumer base and rapidly evolving technology ecosystem make it an important market for companies developing new forms of digital engagement.
The country’s mobile-first behaviour also creates a potentially favourable environment for interactive experiences that can be accessed through smartphones rather than specialised hardware or applications.
For brands competing for consumer attention across social media, mobile platforms and digital commerce, the shift from simply showing content to allowing consumers to interact with it could represent a significant change in digital marketing strategy.
SmartSense’s role will therefore extend beyond technology distribution to include localisation and deployment around specific Nigerian business needs.
$40m Funding to Accelerate AI Research and Global Expansion
The Series B capital will be used primarily to advance Flam’s AI research and development, expand its product portfolio and accelerate enterprise sales globally.
QED Investors’ Co-Founder and Managing Partner Nigel Morris said Flam was approaching an area of the AI content ecosystem that remains relatively underdeveloped.
“Almost every frontier AI content company we see is optimizing what already exists. Flam pointed at something else: how much of the content ecosystem is still untouched,” Morris said.
Adding:
“That gap is bigger than most people think, and Flam is the first team we’ve seen with the infrastructure to go after it.”
The investment provides Flam with additional capital to develop its underlying AI models while expanding the commercial infrastructure needed to bring interactive content to more enterprises.
Nigeria’s Brands Face a New AI Content Opportunity
The arrival of Flam through SmartSense comes at a time when artificial intelligence is increasingly moving from experimentation into mainstream business applications in Nigeria.
The emerging challenge for enterprises is no longer simply whether to adopt AI, but how to deploy it in ways that create measurable commercial value.
Interactive content could form part of that next phase.
Rather than producing a video, advert or product image for passive consumption, brands could potentially build experiences in which customers ask questions, change products, navigate visual environments, speak with AI characters or receive personalised responses.
That represents a shift from content as a message to content as an experience.
For SmartSense and Flam, Nigeria could provide an important test of how that model performs in one of Africa’s most dynamic and mobile-driven digital markets.
