Ex-Microsoft engineer's AI video startup raises $60M from top VCs, says Jared Leto

As the demand for generative AI videos grows, startups in the space are attracting significant funding from venture capital firms. Recently, RunwayML was reported to be raising a large funding round. Now, AI video startup Captions, founded by ex-Microsoft engineer Gaurav Misra, has secured $60 million in Series C funding.

Founded in 2021, Captions started out as a camera app where users recorded “talking videos” by interacting directly with the camera. Over the past year, the company has shifted its focus to AI, allowing users to create videos from scratch with avatars. It's essentially an AI-powered creative suite for video creators.

Misra said the investment, led by Index Ventures, values ​​the company at $500 million, but it's not a solo effort: existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the round, along with new investors Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures and actor and singer Jared Leto (who previously backed Pika).

Captions will use the funding to expand its ML team in New York and launch new generative innovations to solidify its position as a leader in the AI ​​video space.

A complete suite of Captions for AI Video

What started as manual video creation, where users had to speak, record, and edit themselves, has evolved into a comprehensive, AI-powered suite that provides brands and individuals everything they need to produce high-quality videos.

To achieve this change, the company first expanded its editing services with a range of AI-assisted tools, such as correcting eye contact, dubbing a speaker's words into another language, performing human-like voiceovers, and creating short clips from longer videos.

These features attracted millions of users to Captions, but the real milestone came earlier this year when we announced our generative AI-driven AI Creator and AI Edit features.

The former allows users to add custom 3D avatars to their video content, saving them the trouble of manually addressing their viewers in every video, while the latter allows users to tweak their content with custom graphics, B-roll, transitions, zooms, and more, all with just a tap.

“These revolutionary features catalyzed a new era of creativity, empowering an entirely new group of creators who might otherwise be held back by the barriers associated with recording and editing,” Misra said in a blog post.

More plans in the works

While the AI's smarts have attracted Captions tons of users (more than 10 million people creating more than 3 million videos each month), Misra says this is just the beginning for the company.

With this funding, the startup plans to expand its machine learning (ML) team and further invest in its in-house research and technology infrastructure to further enhance AI capabilities for its video platform.

“Looking to the future, I'm pleased to announce plans to invest $100 million to advance generative video research here in New York City,” he wrote. “We believe New York is emerging as a hub for AI research, and we look forward to building a world-class team here.”

It's unclear what exactly Captions is working on, but the move to focus on existing features could strengthen the company's suite into a unified platform for creating avatar-based videos, which could make it a stronger competitor to niche companies like ElevenLabs and Synthesia.

The enhanced feature set makes Captions even more valuable to businesses, especially those involved in social media management, advertising, content marketing, and growth marketing.

“Short-form video has become the most mainstream content format, and captions have a unique place in it.
“Captions is transforming the way marketers create video and engage with their customers,” said Brandon Greer, head of HubSpot Ventures. “We're thrilled to support Captions as it empowers businesses of all sizes to produce high-quality video content faster than ever before.”

Celebrities currently using the captioning platform include Disney-owned sports network ESPN; Shark Tank Renowned Twitch founder Justin Kan and influencer Unnecessary Inventions.