The generative AI hype hasn’t died down but.
Living proof, Pika Labs, a startup creating an AI-powered platform to edit and generate movies from captions and nonetheless photos, as we speak introduced that it raised $55 million in a funding spherical led by Lightspeed Enterprise Companions with participation from Homebrew, Conviction Capital, SV Angel, Ben’s Bites and notable angel traders together with Quora founder Adam D’Angelo, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Giphy co-founder Alex Chung.
The contemporary tranche comes simply six months after Pika emerged from stealth and coincides with the early entry launch of what Pika’s calling “Pika 1.0,” a brand new suite of videography instruments that introduces a generative AI mannequin able to enhancing movies in a variety of kinds, like “3D animation,” “anime” and “cinematic.”
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
“Video is on the coronary heart of leisure, but the method of creating high-quality movies so far continues to be sophisticated and resource-intensive,” Pika writes in a weblog put up revealed on its web site this morning. “After we began Pika six months in the past, we wished to push the boundaries of know-how and design a future interface of video making that’s easy and accessible to everybody. Since then, we’re proud to have grown the Pika neighborhood to half one million customers, who’re producing tens of millions of movies per week.”
Pika was co-founded by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, each former Ph.D. college students in Stanford’s Synthetic Intelligence Lab. Previous to learning at Stanford, Guo labored as an engineer at Meta’s AI analysis division, whereas Meng co-authored quite a lot of AI analysis papers together with a number of pertaining to generative AI.
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
Pika competes in opposition to generative AI video instruments and fashions from the likes of Runway and Stability AI. However with Pika 1.0, Pika’s trying to up its sport with a number of differentiating options.
For instance, Pika 1.0 ships with a software that may prolong the size of present movies or rework them into completely different kinds, like “dwell motion” to “animated” — or broaden the canvas or side ratio of a video. One other module edits video content material utilizing AI, like altering somebody’s clothes and even including one other character.
We’ll need to put these capabilities to the take a look at as soon as Pika 1.0 turns into extensively accessible. However for what its value, Lightspeed — which can be an investor in Stability AI — has confidence within the platform.
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
“Simply as different new AI merchandise have achieved for textual content and pictures, professional-quality video creation may also grow to be democratized by generative AI. We imagine Pika will lead that transformation,” Lightspeed’s Michael Mignano stated in a press launch. “Given such a formidable technical basis, rooted in an early ardour for creativity, the Pika crew appears destined to vary how all of us share our tales visually. At Lightspeed, we couldn’t be extra excited to assist their mission to permit anybody to convey their inventive imaginative and prescient to life by means of video, and we’re thrilled to be investing alongside different superb traders on the forefront of AI.”
To this point, Pika Labs has raised round $61 million, inclusive of a $5 spherical led in April led by Friedman.
The generative AI hype hasn’t died down but.
Living proof, Pika Labs, a startup creating an AI-powered platform to edit and generate movies from captions and nonetheless photos, as we speak introduced that it raised $55 million in a funding spherical led by Lightspeed Enterprise Companions with participation from Homebrew, Conviction Capital, SV Angel, Ben’s Bites and notable angel traders together with Quora founder Adam D’Angelo, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Giphy co-founder Alex Chung.
The contemporary tranche comes simply six months after Pika emerged from stealth and coincides with the early entry launch of what Pika’s calling “Pika 1.0,” a brand new suite of videography instruments that introduces a generative AI mannequin able to enhancing movies in a variety of kinds, like “3D animation,” “anime” and “cinematic.”
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
“Video is on the coronary heart of leisure, but the method of creating high-quality movies so far continues to be sophisticated and resource-intensive,” Pika writes in a weblog put up revealed on its web site this morning. “After we began Pika six months in the past, we wished to push the boundaries of know-how and design a future interface of video making that’s easy and accessible to everybody. Since then, we’re proud to have grown the Pika neighborhood to half one million customers, who’re producing tens of millions of movies per week.”
Pika was co-founded by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, each former Ph.D. college students in Stanford’s Synthetic Intelligence Lab. Previous to learning at Stanford, Guo labored as an engineer at Meta’s AI analysis division, whereas Meng co-authored quite a lot of AI analysis papers together with a number of pertaining to generative AI.
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
Pika competes in opposition to generative AI video instruments and fashions from the likes of Runway and Stability AI. However with Pika 1.0, Pika’s trying to up its sport with a number of differentiating options.
For instance, Pika 1.0 ships with a software that may prolong the size of present movies or rework them into completely different kinds, like “dwell motion” to “animated” — or broaden the canvas or side ratio of a video. One other module edits video content material utilizing AI, like altering somebody’s clothes and even including one other character.
We’ll need to put these capabilities to the take a look at as soon as Pika 1.0 turns into extensively accessible. However for what its value, Lightspeed — which can be an investor in Stability AI — has confidence within the platform.
Picture Credit: Pika Labs
“Simply as different new AI merchandise have achieved for textual content and pictures, professional-quality video creation may also grow to be democratized by generative AI. We imagine Pika will lead that transformation,” Lightspeed’s Michael Mignano stated in a press launch. “Given such a formidable technical basis, rooted in an early ardour for creativity, the Pika crew appears destined to vary how all of us share our tales visually. At Lightspeed, we couldn’t be extra excited to assist their mission to permit anybody to convey their inventive imaginative and prescient to life by means of video, and we’re thrilled to be investing alongside different superb traders on the forefront of AI.”
To this point, Pika Labs has raised round $61 million, inclusive of a $5 spherical led in April led by Friedman.
