According to SEC filing, Los Angeles-based Startup Moonvalley, which develops AI tools for video creation, has raised $43 million in venture capital.
The filing lists 11 unknown investors, which will take place about a week after Moonvalley launched its first AI video generation model, Marey. Moonvalley previously raised $70 million in seed funding from supporters, including General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
A Moonvalley spokesman told TechCrunch that the submission “does not indicate the total funding count,” and that “the actual number will be formalized and announced in the coming weeks.”
With a wide range of tools available to build video generators, there is a risk of bender Cambrian explosions and space oversaturation. Startups like Runway and Luma, and tech giants like Openai and Google have released their models with high-speed clips.
Built in collaboration with a new AI animation studio called Asteria, Moonvalley’s Marey model offers customization options such as fine-grained cameras and motion controls, allowing you to generate “HD” clips up to 30 seconds. Moonvalley argues that it is less risky than other video generation models from a legal perspective.
Many generated video startups train models of public data, some of which are always copyrighted. These companies claim that fair doctrine protects practices, but that has not stopped rights holders from filing complaints and filing requests.
Moonvalley says they work with partners to handle license arrangements, package the video and package it into data sets that the company purchases. This approach is similar to Adobe’s, which procures video footage of training from creators through Adobe’s inventory platform.
It’s only natural for video generators as many artists and creators are threatening to overturn the film and television industry. A 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, estimates that by 2026 more than 100,000 US-based film, television and animation jobs will be destroyed by AI.
Moonvalley plans to require creators to remove content from the model, allowing customers to delete data at any time, and provide compensation policies to protect users from copyright issues.
Unlike some “unfiltered” video models that easily insert people’s portraits into clips, Moonvalley also promises to build guardrails around that tool. Like Openai’s SORA, Moonvalley’s model cannot block certain content, such as NSFW phrases, and encourage people to generate videos of certain people or celebrities.
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