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Because the demand for generative AI video grows, startups on this area are attracting huge cash from enterprise capital corporations. Lately, RunwayML was reported to be elevating a big spherical of funding. Now, Captions, an AI video startup based by former Microsoft engineer Gaurav Misra, has secured $60 million in Sequence C funding.
Based in 2021, Captions began as a digicam app wherein customers recorded ‘talking videos’ by partaking with the digicam instantly. Over the previous yr, the corporate has shifted its focus to AI, enabling customers to create movies with avatars from scratch. It has primarily turn out to be an AI-powered inventive suite for video creators.
Misra said that the funding, led by Index Ventures, values the corporate at $500 million. Nevertheless, it’s not a lone effort, as current traders Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, in addition to new traders Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures and actor and singer Jared Leto (who beforehand backed Pika) additionally participated within the spherical.
Captions will use the capital to develop its ML staff in New York and launch new generative improvements to place itself because the chief within the AI video area.
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Captions’ holistic suite for AI movies
From the roots of handbook video creation, the place customers needed to speak, document and edit on their very own, Captions has advanced right into a holistic AI-powered suite that gives every little thing a model or particular person must generate high-quality movies.
To attain this shift, the corporate first expanded its enhancing choices with a variety of AI-assisted instruments, together with these for correcting eye contact, dubbing a speaker’s phrases into one other language, executing human-like voiceovers and producing quick clips from an extended piece of video (amongst different issues).
The options drew a number of million customers to Captions, however the actual milestone got here earlier this yr when it introduced generative AI-driven AI Creator and AI Edit capabilities.
The previous allowed customers so as to add customized 3D avatars to their video content material, saving the effort of speaking manually to the viewers in each video. In the meantime, the latter supplied customers with the power to tweak their content material — full with customized graphics, B-roll, transitions and zooms — simply with a single faucet.
“These innovative features (have) catalyzed a new age for creativity, empowering an entirely new group of creators who otherwise may have been blocked by the barriers that come with recording or editing,” Misra famous in a weblog submit.
Much more within the pipeline
Whereas the AI smarts have drawn numerous customers — greater than 10 million of them creating three million-plus movies each month — to Captions, Misra says that is only the start for the corporate.
With this spherical of funding, the startup will broaden its machine studying (ML) staff and make investments extra in in-house analysis and technical infrastructure to launch extra AI capabilities for its video platform.
“Looking to the future, we’re excited to share our plans to invest $100 million into advancing generative video research here in New York City,” he wrote. “We believe that New York is emerging as the epicenter for AI research and look forward to building our world-class team here.”
Whereas it stays unclear what precisely Captions has within the pipeline, the transfer to double down on current options might bolster the corporate’s suite right into a unified platform for producing avatar-based movies. This might make the corporate a powerful competitor for area of interest gamers like ElevenLabs and Synthesia.
The improved set of capabilities will even make Captions extra precious to companies, particularly these concerned in social media administration, promoting, content material advertising and progress advertising.
“Short-form video has become the most dominant content format, and Captions is uniquely positioned
to transform how marketers create videos and engage with customers,” stated Brandon Greer, head of HubSpot Ventures. “We’re excited to support Captions as they enable businesses of all sizes to produce high-quality video content faster than ever.”
Some notable names at present utilizing the Captions’ platform are Disney-owned sports activities community ESPN, “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame, Twitch’s founder Justin Kan and the influencer Pointless Innovations.