Jared Leto is entering into the generative synthetic intelligence enterprise.
The actor and musician is among the many buyers in a startup referred to as Captions, which is growing Gen AI tech within the video creation and enhancing area.
Captions introduced its Sequence C funding spherical Tuesday, which sees Leto investing alongside VC heavyweights like Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, in addition to Index Ventures and Adobe.
The startup mentioned that with the $60 million Sequence C spherical, which values the corporate at $500 million, it has now raised $100 million.
Captions has launched a handful of instruments up to now (centered totally on movies the place an individual is talking on to the digicam), together with AI Creator, AI Edit, and Lipdub. Regardless of the modest motion up to now, the promise of AI video technology has intoxicated Hollywood and silicon Valley, with AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic releasing video technology instruments of their very own, and a flurry of startups specializing within the area of interest like Runway ML exploring the market.
Leto, in the meantime, beforehand invested in one other gen AI statup, referred to as Pika, final month. Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars had explored utilizing that firm’s tech in music movies, per Bloomberg.
“We consider that New York is shortly rising because the epicenter for AI, and sit up for increasing our crew right here and furthering our mission of democratizing video creation, in order that anybody can successfully share their tales or concepts,” mentioned Gaurav Misra, co-founder and CEO of Captions. “We’re grateful for the continued assist from our buyers and neighborhood, and excited for our subsequent chapter.”
“Storytelling is humanity’s strongest trait,” added Damir Becirovic, a companion at Index Ventures. “Captions is enabling a better dimension of storytelling by way of their AI-enabled video creation product. The corporate permits anybody to carry their tales to life in ways in which have been beforehand unimaginable and to actually share them with the entire world. The outcome might be an enormous wave of unbelievable tales which are imagined and directed by Captions customers.”