Moonvalley AI Inc., a generative artificial intelligence research startup working on video AI models and tools trained on fully licensed content, today announced it raised $84 million in additional funding.

The funding round was led by existing investor General Catalyst and included strategic investments from the entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency, AI cloud CoreWeave, Comcast Ventures, Khosla Ventures and YCombinator. The fundraise brings the total raised by the company to $154 million.

Moonvalley recently released its flagship model to the public, dubbed Marey, which is designed to be a production-grade AI videography platform built on purely licensed content, making it an “ethical” model, for professional filmmakers and brand designers.

“We’re building world-class models while respecting the creative community, and these partners will help us give studios and creators a real alternative to unlicensed models,” said Naeem Talukdar, Moonvalley’s chief executive and co-founder.

The company works directly with its Hollywood filmmaking arm, Asteria, a generative AI film and animation studio. The arm, led by two-time Oscar-winning Bryn Mooser, provides industry expertise and a thorough understanding of what filmmakers, studios and brand professionals need from an AI model and tools.

In developing Marey, Talukdar stressed that the company’s vision was to focus on industry collaboration and avoid commoditizing the work of creatives. The model is designed to work alongside filmmakers and professionals, not replace them. To achieve this, the company addressed the issues that actual editors and industry workers faced day-to-day in their work to create a product that fit their needs, he said.

Furthermore, its asset library is ethically sourced from licensed content so that anyone who uses it can be certain that anything the model and tools produce is commercially safe.

“Ethically led and talent-friendly applications of AI are a top priority for CAA. We see an opportunity with these emerging tools and technologies, and having a set of partners who are aligned in the ethics behind AI is critical,” said Alexandra Shannon, head of strategic development at CAA. “Moonvalley understands that AI should empower artists, not undermine them.”

Marey’s asset library and tools allows filmmakers and professionals to build scenes using a wide variety of tools with video game-like flexibility. They can add characters, define movement, import images and video, while it understands composition, allows them to define movement, explain using English prompts and even guide camera angles. According to the company, the foundational AI model and tools that it has released is among the most state-of-the-art produced to date for the industry.

The intersection of AI and filmmaking has generated both interest and backlash from the industry as it continues to capture attention. In an open letter sent to the United States White House, over 400 film industry professionals — directors, actors, musicians, and other below-the-line creatives — signed a proposal asking that copyright law be upheld for AI and tech companies seeking to train AI models. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stated that AI-generated work can be eligible for Oscars; however, human involvement will be taken into account when selecting winners, and more human involvement is preferred.

Last week, a nearly year-long strike by video game voice and motion capture actors from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists recently ended with the signing of a new contract that adds additional protections. These include consent and disclosure requirements for the use of AI-generated digital replicas, and the ability for performers to suspend consent for the generation of new material during a strike.

With the new capital, Moonvalley said it intends to scale to meet enterprise demand. It seeks to expand its licensed content library, increase access for developers and internal platform teams and build more features for studio and enterprise partners. The company said it’s also hiring engineering and support staff for enterprise-scale deployments.

“Our research team is solving the hardest problems in video AI, from understanding real-world physics and natural motion to giving filmmakers frame-level control,” said Mateusz Malinowski, Moonvalley’s chief scientific officer. “We’re proving that licensed models can deliver the quality and precision that professional productions demand.”

Image: Moonvalley