Captions, the leading generative video creation and editing platform, has announced a successful Series C funding round, raising $60 million led by Index Ventures. This latest round brings the company’s total capital raised to $100 million, boosting its valuation to $500 million. The funding saw participation from returning investors Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital, along with new investors Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto. The new capital will be utilized to expand Captions’ machine learning team, enhance in-house research efforts, and bolster technical infrastructure, positioning the company at the forefront of video technology innovation.
Gaurav Misra, co-founder and CEO of Captions, shared the company’s future plans: “We’re excited to share our plan to invest $100M into advancing generative video research from New York City. We believe that New York is quickly emerging as the epicenter for AI, and look forward to expanding our team here and furthering our mission of democratizing video creation, so that anyone can effectively share their stories or ideas. We’re grateful for the continued support from our investors and community, and excited for our next chapter.”
In the past few months, Captions has introduced groundbreaking technologies, including AI Creator, the first-ever 3D avatar designed for content creation; AI Edit, a one-tap video editing tool; and Lipdub, a model generating natural lip movements and body language. These innovations have fueled exceptional growth, with over 10 million mobile downloads in the last year alone.
Damir Becirovic, Partner at Index Ventures, praised Captions’ impact: “Storytelling is humanity’s most powerful trait. Captions is enabling a higher dimension of storytelling via their AI-enabled video creation product. The company allows anyone to bring their stories to life in ways that were previously unimaginable and to truly share them with the whole world. The result will be a huge wave of incredible stories that are imagined and directed by Captions users.”
Everett Randle, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, added: “We’re thrilled to continue supporting Captions, especially as we’ve witnessed the company achieve one major milestone after another in such a short period of time. Captions’ ability to ship widely-adopted, innovative products quickly has become a defining characteristic for their team and we look forward to continuing to partner with them.”
To date, Captions has provided a suite of recording and editing tools focused on enhancing “talking videos” where creators address the camera directly. With the launch of AI Creator, Captions has expanded its offerings, enabling users to generate videos entirely. This feature is already being leveraged in various content forms, from organic social media posts to advertisements for both small and established businesses.