Jared Leto is getting into the generative artificial intelligence business.
The actor and musician is among the investors in a startup called Captions, which is developing Gen AI tech in the video creation and editing space.
Captions announced its Series C funding round Tuesday, which sees Leto investing alongside VC heavyweights like Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Index Ventures and Adobe.
The startup said that with the $60 million Series C round, which values the company at $500 million, it has now raised $100 million.
Captions has released a handful of tools so far (focused mostly on videos where a person is speaking directly to the camera), including AI Creator, AI Edit, and Lipdub. Despite the modest movement so far, the promise of AI video generation has intoxicated Hollywood and silicon Valley, with AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic releasing video generation tools of their own, and a flurry of startups specializing in the niche like Runway ML exploring the market.
Leto, meanwhile, previously invested in another gen AI statup, called Pika, last month. Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars had explored using that company’s tech in music videos, per Bloomberg.
“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,” said Gaurav Misra, co-founder and CEO of Captions. “We’re grateful for the continued support from our investors and community, and excited for our next chapter.”
“Storytelling is humanity’s most powerful trait,” added Damir Becirovic, a partner at Index Ventures. “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.”
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