It’s by no means been simpler to create and publish artwork than it’s now, and if you happen to imagine the businesses constructing tech round AI, the manufacturing course of goes to get much more environment friendly. That’s particularly the case with video manufacturing, with corporations of all sizes utilizing giant language fashions to construct instruments that allow you to whip up decent-quality movies and animation with just a few prompts and actions.
Popular instruments on this house embody Google’s Veo 2, OpenAI’s Sora, Runway, Luma AI, and Shanghai-based Hailuo. Now, a South Korean startup referred to as Cinamon is ramping up efforts to say part of this burgeoning market — it lately raised an $8.5 million Series B spherical to proceed constructing its animated video technology platform “CINEV,” slated to be launched in beta within the first half of 2025. Altos Ventures, an current backer, in addition to Saehan Venture Capital invested on this spherical.
Cinamon’s pitch is that its platform supplies a video generator that may allow you to construct 3D environments, direct scenes and actions, place characters, edit digital camera angles, and extra — all with textual content prompts and sliders.
According to its CEO Doosun Hong, the corporate’s strategy essentially differs from current AI video turbines, which create movies by producing pixels utilizing textual content, pictures, and movies as reference supplies. In distinction, CINEV combines a 3D asset library, AI movement technology, and a filmmaking-focused giant language mannequin to first assemble 3D scenes full with characters and components, after which permits you to edit them utilizing its suite of video manufacturing and modifying instruments.
“Our strategy permits simpler course and modifying with out consistency/physics points, making it notably appropriate for longer-form content material like movies and dramas,” Hong stated. “We envision CINEV to be complementary to current AI video instruments, probably enabling new workflows the place CINEV’s output might function high-quality reference materials for different AI video platforms.”
Cinamon began life in 2019 as Cinamon Games, a subsidiary of content material manufacturing agency Vonvon. Cinamon initially arrange a JV with NAVER WEBTOON, a Korean digital storytelling platform, to create Maybe, an interactive storytelling app. Facing rising knowledge privateness issues, Vonvon merged with Cinamon Games later in 2019 to focus solely on storytelling within the social content material house.
While its opponents like Crazy Maple Studio began providing animated interactive story apps, fiction apps, storytelling apps, and short-form movies, Cinamon as an alternative selected to deal with creating 3D animation instruments that might pace up and scale animation manufacturing for content material creators and studios. Even although it price extra funding than instruments for 2D content material, they noticed larger scalability potential.
In 2022, the startup started constructing its 3D animation platform, and later built-in AI options to boost manufacturing effectivity. In September that yr, South Korean gaming firm Krafton, Naver Z (a unit of Korean web large Naver), and SNOW, (a digital camera app run by Naver), invested $10 million in Cinamon’s Series A.
Going ahead, Cinamon plans to make use of its traders’ IPs and 3D belongings to bolster its providing. Krafton has substantial mental property and 3D belongings utilized in its Battleground video games, whereas Naver Z operates the Zepeto metaverse platform. Cinamon says CINEV might help prolong these IPs past gaming by enabling content material creators to make use of these IPs, and probably drive consumer acquisition for Krafton and Naver Z. Cinamon additionally entered Nvidia’s startup accelerator, Inception, final August.
“Our potential customers embody comedian, manga, webtoon artists, net novel writers, recreation builders, video creators, and conventional animators on the lookout for simpler workflows,” Hong stated. “In 2025, we plan to deal with clients [ranging] from particular person creators to content material IP corporations on the lookout for simpler, sooner, cheaper methods to create Anime, VTuber, and cinematic online game content material.”
Cinamon plans to make use of the brand new capital for hiring extra AI engineers and for R&D. The startup has a crew of 60 employees with experience in 3D graphics, AI, gaming, and content material manufacturing. This Series B brings its complete capital raised thus far to $18.5 million (25 billion KRW).
