AI video creation app Captions luggage $25M from high VCs

Captions, an AI-powered video creation app for iOS that launched in 2021 and counted over three million customers thus far, at present introduced its $25 million in Collection B funding led by Kleiner Perkins with further funding supplied by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and SV Angel.

The corporate has now raised a complete $40 million. It was based by Gaurav Misra, former head of design engineering at Snap and a former software program growth engineer (II) at Microsoft.

Captions initially carved its area of interest as a digital camera utility catering to “speaking movies”, the place creators have interaction with the digital camera straight. Together with its funding announcement, the corporate has introduced a rebranding and new look that Misra wrote in a weblog put up “we imagine correctly represents the defining traits of Captions.”

These traits embody a lot of options, from AI-powered redubbing of a speaker’s phrases into one other language whereas sustaining the sound of their voice, to human-like AI voiceovers, to AI powered brief clip manufacturing from an extended piece of video, to distinctive, unique, AI-created, royalty-free music for movies.

Evolving from its roots, Captions has since turn out to be a holistic inventive suite, main the cost in remodeling content material creation by state-of-the-art AI functionalities, leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-4 giant language mannequin (LLM) and an AI Eye Contact function developed with Nvidia.

“We acknowledged the necessity amongst creators utilizing teleprompters and off-screen scripts and collaborated with Nvidia to develop the attention contact correction function particularly for this use case,” mentioned Gaurav Misra, Captions’ co-founder and CEO, in assertion supplied to VentureBeat by way of spokesperson. “Upon its launch earlier this 12 months, it turned an prompt hit, and now many different firms are growing comparable know-how impressed by Captions.”

The AI adjusts a video host’s gaze in realtime, creating the phantasm that they’re making eye contact with the digital camera.

Whereas Captions is actually consumer-focused, it has garnered traction amongst enterprise customers as effectively, particularly these concerned in social media administration, content material advertising, and progress advertising.

The platform appeals to a various viewers together with, however not restricted to, influencers, realtors, health trainers, musicians, and gross sales professionals.

Notable accounts using Captions embody the Disney-owned sports activities community ESPN and its commentator Omar Raja, Mr. Great of Shark Tank fame, Twitch’s founder Justin Kan, and the influencer Pointless Innovations.

Everett Randle, a companion at Kleiner Perkins, lauded Captions stating, “AI is redefining how digital merchandise are created, and Captions has emerged because the main AI-powered platform for video content material. Hundreds of thousands of customers have already leveraged it to inform their tales and interact audiences. Gaurav and the Captions staff have deep empathy for and understanding of creators from their time at Snap that we imagine is important in constructing inside this new period of AI-enabled product growth. We’re thrilled to guide Captions’ Collection B and help the creation of the AI-powered inventive studio.”

Mike Vernal from Sequoia Capital additionally heaped reward on Misra and Captions in an announcement, writing: “Captions use of AI for video manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize the studio expertise for at present’s creator economic system. The person enthusiasm and loyalty Captions has skilled this early on is a transparent indication of their future success.”