The creative AI hype hasn’t died down yet.
In this case, Spadesa startup building an AI-powered platform for editing and creating video from captions and photos, announced today that it has raised $55 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Homebrew, Conviction Capital, SV Angel , Ben’s Bites and notable angel investors such as Quora founder Adam D’Angelo, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Giphy co-founder Alex Chung.
The new installment comes just six months after Pika came out of stealth and coincides with early access to what Pika calls “Pika 1.0,” a new suite of videography tools that introduces a generative AI model capable of editing video in a range of styles . such as “3D animation”, “anime” and “cinematic”.
Image Credits: Spades
“Video is at the heart of entertainment, yet the process of creating high-quality video to date is still complex and resource-intensive,” Pika writes in a suspension posted on her website this morning. “When we started Pika six months ago, we wanted to push the boundaries of technology and design a future video creation interface that is easy and accessible to everyone. Since then, we’re proud to have grown the Pika community to half a million users, who create millions of videos per week.”
Pika was founded by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, former PhD students at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Before studying at Stanford, Guo worked as an engineer in Meta’s AI research department, while Meng authored a number of AI research papers, including several related to genetic AI.
![Pika Labs](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1_Rrj9x4MwYJ9lyKiZ98EIzQ.gif)
Image Credits: Spades
Pika competes with AI video tools and models created by Runway and Stability AI. But with Pika 1.0, Pika wants to up its game with several differentiating features.
For example, Pika 1.0 comes with a tool that can extend the duration of existing videos or convert them to different styles, such as “live action” to “animated” — or expand the canvas or aspect ratio of a video. Another section edits video content using artificial intelligence, such as changing someone’s clothes or even adding another character.
We should test these features once Pika 1.0 becomes widely available. But for what it’s worth, Lightspeed — which is also an investor in Stability AI — has confidence in the platform — even as tech giants like Google and Meta telegraph that they, too, are working on AI tools for video.
![Pika Labs](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1_mBClJ-cet_eBoagfYsEUWg.gif)
Image Credits: Spades
“Just as other new AI products have done for text and images, the creation of professional-quality video will also be democratized by the creation of AI. We believe Pika will lead this transformation,” Lightspeed’s Michael Mignano said in a press release. “Given such an impressive technical foundation, rooted in an early passion for creativity, the Pika team seems destined to change the way we all share our stories visually. At Lightspeed, we couldn’t be more excited to support their mission to enable anyone to bring their creative vision to life through video, and we’re thrilled to be investing alongside other amazing investors at the forefront of AI.”
Pika’s rapid growth reflects continued, strong demand for genetic AI of all flavors — from tools like Midjourney and DALL-E 3 to ChatGPT.
In a recent reportIDC predicted that investment in genetic AI will grow from $16 billion this year to $143 billion in 2027. While generative AI will account for just 9% of total AI spending in 2023, the company expects it to grow to 28 % within five years.
The expense may just be justified. Recent voting — although it only focused on UK users — found that Gen Z is embracing genetic AI, with four in five (79%) 13-17 year olds reporting having used AI tools, apps and services; such as ChatGPT and Snapchat’s My AI.
Again, Gen Zers aren’t necessarily beneficiary for genetic artificial intelligence. And corporate customers, who have the biggest funds to spend on it, face barriers to deploying certain forms of technology.
O’Reilly’s 2023 Genetic AI in Business report reveals that many enterprise AI users (26%) are still in the early stages of piloting genetic AI and are deeply concerned about the potential challenges that exist today and in the future around the technology – including unexpected outcomes, safety, security, fairness , bias and privacy. Difficulty finding business use cases and concerns about legal issues (such as who owns the copyright on AI-generated output) are holding back AI, the report suggests, as are poorly designed and poorly implemented AI solutions intelligence.