AI video creation and editing startup Captions acquired “AI-powered digital canvas” platform AlpacaML in its first-ever acquisition, according to Axios.
The news comes after Captions’ $500 million valuation in a Series C funding round which raised $60 million in July. The financing was led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. New investors include Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto, bringing the AI video editing startup’s total capital raised to over $100 million.
In a statement, Captions said that the company is going to invest $100 million in advancing generative AI video research in New York City, claiming that the city is “emerging as an epicenter for AI research.”
What started as a social network project turned into a video creation and edition platform—founded in 2021 by CEO Gaurav Misra and COO Dwight Churchill, Captions has now launched world-first generative features in creating and editing videos using AI.
Named TIME magazine’s “Best Inventions for 2024,” reaching milestones such as hitting over 10 million users, who created over $3 million videos, and growing its team, Captions has been on the rise in the AI video creation market.
Misra, a former engineer at Microsoft, said that the goal is to invest $100 million into training Captions’ foundation model, a process that is expected to continue through 2025.
AlpacaML, founded in 2022, is an AI rendering engine that transforms sketches, thumbnails, and images into high-quality, styled visuals. With the aim to “extend and empower artists,” and not replace them, AlpacaML automates the grunt work of creating complex textures, backgrounds, lighting, and details.
“The acquisition of AlpacaML will allow us to continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with generative video,” wrote Misra in a social media post on X on Nov. 13.
Sharing an investor Index Ventures with Captions, AlpacaML raised $4.2 million in a seed funding round, prior to the acquisition. AlpacaML’s CEO William Buchwalter will join Captions as a research engineer and the AI video editing startup has also extended job offers to all six of AlpacaML’s employees.
Axios reported that Captions is considering more acquisitions, with a special interest in machine learning companies well-versed in model training, infrastructure, and inference.