Rembrand and Whisper World Merge Into WRLabs, Eye IPO

Two in-content advertising companies, Rembrand and Whisper World, are merging in a largely stock-based deal expected to close in January, and an IPO is "absolutely" on the table, according to Rembrand CEO Omar Tawakol.

The combined company will operate as WRLabs. Whisper World founder Manav Kapoor takes the group CEO role and co-chair; Tawakol becomes co-chair. WRLabs will raise money after the deal closes, Tawakol said.

What does the merger change for each side?

For Rembrand, the deal brings scale and cash discipline. Whisper World's in-content ad business is much larger than Rembrand's, and Tawakol said the merger will grow the company about fourfold and make its in-content ad business "instantly profitable." It also delivers a decade of proprietary footage to train Rembrand's AI models.

"Now you have an AI company that has proprietary data that isn't just burning cash," Tawakol said.

For Whisper World, the deal brings AI technology that can handle far more insertions without new hires. It also opens a path into the U.S. market through Rembrand's supply partnerships with companies such as Paramount and Hallmark, Kapoor said. Building that alone would take longer and cost more, he added.

Under the new structure, WRLabs acts as parent and funds research into AI video editing. Rembrand becomes the technology arm and builds VFXAgent, which the company described as a "coding agent for visual effects." Whisper World, Spaceback and MRFactory keep their names: Whisper World continues selling in-content ads; Spaceback, which Rembrand merged with last year, turns social posts into paid ads; and MRFactory, a Madrid studio known for its work on Money Heist, runs virtual production studios.

How does the ad format work?

Virtual product placement has historically been hard to buy at scale, Tawakol said. Brand and show owners negotiated every placement, down to the scene and whether a product would sit next to an actor with a competing endorsement deal.

Whisper World, founded in 2013, took the negotiation out. It inserts virtual billboards into established shots after actors have left the frame, so directors don't sign off, and show owners approve inventory without knowing which brand will fill it. Placements run as 15-second units with minimums for time on screen and share of screen, measured in gross rating points through Kantar, the same way advertisers measure TV spots.

"They solved a problem nobody had solved, including us," Tawakol said.

Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble have bought the format for five years, Kapoor noted. Whisper World completes about 30,000 insertions a year, and Rembrand's AI handles about 70% of them in South Africa and India. The partnership also gives Rembrand training data it could not get from YouTube: premium TV and film footage plus the artists' original edits. Tawakol said the model improved every week as Whisper World's more than 100 visual effects artists used it and flagged where it fell short.

What are the numbers behind the deal?

Tawakol founded Rembrand in 2022, after selling BlueKai to Oracle in 2014 and Voicea to Cisco in 2019. The company raised $23 million in Series A in January 2025, bringing total funding to $31 million.

Tawakol declined to give Rembrand's current valuation but said the roughly $80 million reported figure dates to its Series A in early 2025, when it had about $2 million in bookings. Bookings are now about 20 times that size.

The two companies first met in June 2025 as partners. They began merger talks that November, signed a term sheet in February and reached a definitive agreement this month.

WRLabs will have about 450 employees in eight countries, work with roughly 3,000 advertisers and reach over 2 billion viewers a month across its businesses, according to the company. Tawakol said teams will largely keep their current roles and no layoffs are planned.

IPO plans remain early, but Tawakol is confident. "If the market doesn't adjust, we get a good valuation," he said. "If it does adjust, [investors will] be favoring ones that could drive profit. We win either way."

The bet: proprietary data plus profitability gives WRLabs a public-market story that pure-play AI ad startups cannot match.