On March 7, Haiper, an AI video-generation platform, raised US$13.8 million in a seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from 5Y Capital. Prior to this, angel investors including Phil Blunsom and Nando de Freitas helped Haiper complete a $5.4 million pre-seed round of financing in April 2022.
Haiper is an AI startup co-founded by former Google DeepMind members Yishu Miao(CEO) and Ziyu Wang(CTO) , headquartered in London. Initially, Haiper's direction was AI 3D modeling, and then the team shifted its entrepreneurial direction to AI video generation, and launched a beta version of Haiper in just six months.
Different from the subscription payment model of other video generation products, users can directly use the tool by simply entering Haiper's official website. Currently, Haiper can only generate high-definition videos of up to 2 seconds or standard-definition videos of up to 4 seconds, which is insufficient compared to the video generation length of mainstream products. In addition to video generation, Haiper also provides video cartoonization, photo cartoonization, video redrawing and other functions, and plans to introduce extended video functions in the future. The founder said that Haiper's video generation function is not mature enough at present, so it will not implement a paid subscription model for the time being, but is committed to building a community ecosystem.
Haiper is currently focusing on this website video generation product for C-end users, but in the future it plans to develop a video generation model with a wider range of usage scenarios. The company will use the funds to develop a general AI model with complete perception capabilities, allowing AI to better understand the world and replicate real-life scenarios. In terms of ToB, Haiper has cooperated with companies such as JD.com to explore more business scenarios.
Rebecca Hunt, partner at Octopus Ventures, said, "At Octopus, we look to back exceptionally talented founders who have a unique insight into a market and a strong technical edge. Only resilient, experienced teams can build cutting-edge products and solutions, and with Haiper this is no different. The deeply technical foundations of Haiper have enabled them to innovate and make breakthroughs at a pace we haven't yet seen in the AI Video space; they are sure to become one of Europe's big AI players. We look forward to continuing to back Yishu and Ziyu on their world-changing mission."