By Vincent Chow
Copyright scmp
The Beijing-based start-up behind the popular artificial intelligence video generator PixVerse has raised US$60 million in a funding round led by Alibaba Group Holding, the largest single amount raised by a domestic AI video generation firm, according to an announcement on Wednesday.
Other participants in the funding round included Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm Antler and the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. A valuation was not disclosed.
The deal comes as China’s Big Tech firms are looking at niche AI start-ups to complement their own offerings and final products.
Founded in April 2023 by former Microsoft and ByteDance executive Wang Changhu, AIsphere’s video creation product allows users to easily generate videos from text prompts, images and other video clips.
The new funds would support R&D and continued global expansion, the start-up said.
PixVerse now had over 100 million users globally, the announcement said, more than double the number at the start of the year. Its “Venom effect” video template went viral on TikTok late last year.
AI benchmark firm Artificial Analysis ranked PixVerse’s latest model V5, launched in late August, as the industry-leading model globally for image-to-video generation, beating Google DeepMind’s Veo 3.
Last month, PixVerse was ranked No 25 in a list of top 50 generative AI consumer apps by Silicon Valley venture capital firm a16z.
“The emergence of video generation technology is no accident – it’s the inevitable product of the long-term evolution of content and interaction methods, ushering in a new era,” Wang said in a statement.
“The early market consensus on large-scale video generation models provides us with broad space for exploration and innovation opportunities, allowing us to more nimbly seize the opportunities of our times,” he said.
The start-up previously raised over US$55 million in several rounds, with investors including Ant Group, Lighthouse Capital and Eminence Ventures.
The move marked Alibaba’s latest foray into video generation, following investments in AIsphere competitor MiniMax as well as its own models. Other Chinese tech companies have released new video generation products in recent weeks, including ByteDance’s Jimeng AI and Kuaishou Technology’s Kling AI.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Huang Weilin, head of image and video generation at ByteDance Seed, said at an industry event in June that video generation products were projected to generate US$100 million in annual recurring revenue this year, with the potential to grow to US$1 billion next year.
