Character-generating AI platform Hedra has raised $32M in a funding round with venture capital outfit Andreessen Horowitz the lead investor via its a16z Infra fund.
Andreessen Horowitz is also an investor in Promise, the generative AI studio that counts Peter Chernin’s North Road as a backer. Matt Bornstein, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joins the Hedra board following the investment.
“If you want to create AI-driven actors, [Hedra has] the best model in the market by far,” he said. “And that capability unlocks use cases across the creator economy, enterprise marketing, entertainment, and more.”
Michael Lingelbach founded the AI-powered platform for generating character-driven video. A former theater actor who now focuses on tech, he said: “We’re building the next generation of storytelling technology to empower content creators and enterprise marketers to tell narratives at scale on their own. Getting over the uncanny valley of compelling performance is the hardest frontier in video, and with our Character-3 foundation model, we’re devoted to crossing it.”
Hedra, which was founded in 2023 and is based in San Francisco, said it will triple its headcount to 60 as it scales up in the wake of receiving the new funding. The company is now valued at about $200M according to a Reuters report citing sources close the latest funding round.
Actor turned tech boss Lingelbach added: “Unlike competitors focused solely on avatars or narrow use cases, Hedra delivers a unified solution that integrates story, sound, and video generation into one seamless workflow. Teams can create customizable digital characters with unique appearances, voices, and personalities and place them into dynamic scenes.”
