Stockholm-based Motorica, a generation AI company specializing in video game character animation and motion synthesis, announced this week it has closed its $5.8 million (Euro 5 million) seed funding round led by Angular Ventures, and has joined from Luminar Ventures.
The funding will support Motorica's expansion, scaling its own AI platform, and continuing investment in R&D to develop tools for “instant character animation”.
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Details about Motorica's platform are as follows:
- Motorica's Tech is already being used in live production environments by AAA Game Studios and offers production-ready animations at speed and scale. The company said: “In early deployment, the studio reduced animation time by up to 99%, achieving an animation workflow 200 times faster than traditional motion capture.”
- Motorica integrates industry-standard tools and workflows to provide full compatibility with Unreal Engine, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maya, Unity, and Blender. Advanced features include support for motion matching and allow realistic animation of numerous characters in complex gameplay scenarios. The company says its goal is not to replace human creativity, but to eliminate chores like character movement and filler cycles, allowing creative teams to focus on performance, storytelling and style.
- Motorica CEO Willem Demmers said in a statement:
Motorica is a breakthrough in game development and animation technology, creating the next era of games and enabling a digital living world with dynamic, realistic characters that makes gameplay a truly immersive and interactive experience. But unlike other AI developments, we are not here to promote animation workflows. We are here to release it. Traditionally, animators spent 70% of their time on technical groans and only 30% on actual creative performance. The motorca flips it over. Automating grinds makes it like a boring keyframe for basic movements – you can focus on the important things: storytelling, emotion, and innovation. This shift helps the studio move faster, push higher quality, and ship with less friction.
- Animator Maxi Keller (Our Last: Part II, Call of Duty: wwll) shared, “Motorca is the perfect tool for moving animation and motion matching. It provides better and more consistent results than MOCAP because it controls precisely things like acceleration and target speed.”
- “We've been working hard to get the most out of our business,” said David Peterson, partner at Angular Ventures. “We invested in Motorca because we were not only rethinking animation, but also building basic technology that powers the next wave of digital experiences. The platform builds the industrial ground beyond XR, from the way characters travel through games and virtual worlds to machines deploying outdoor exercises that have been cultivated beyond robotics, XR, and the company.”
- Motorica's core IP is built on a research breakthrough by Gustav Henter and Simon Alexanderson, who developed the world's first deep generative model for motion synthesis in 2019. Henter and Alexanderson worked with entrepreneur Willem Demmers to bring the company to the market.
- Motorica owns and operates a motion capture studio in Stockholm, Sweden, and builds what is called “one of the world's largest and most sophisticated and unique movement data sets.” With this foundation, Motoka says that he is “the only generation AI provider currently offering large-scale AAA quality animations and as a category leader in the emerging space of movement.”
Motorica's short-term initiatives include:
- Expand integration through SDKs and APIs to make motorcas for game studios, movies and virtual production teams more plug and play.
- Expand the company's data infrastructure and motion library and add tools for controllable movements in combat, sports and stylized movements.
- It launches strategic partnerships with game engines, simulation platforms and large VFX studios.
- Engineering, animation, data, and overall customer success employment.
