Toronto-based Moonvalley, an artificial intelligence (AI) research company that develops foundational AI video models, has raised an $84-million USD ($115-million CAD) seed extension round as it looks to scale up for demand.
The all-equity round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from strategic investors including prominent Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), AI cloud computing company CoreWeave, and Comcast Ventures.
“This funding proves you don’t have to choose between powerful technology and responsible development.”
Naeem Talukdar
Moonvalley CEO
The round is the latest of many from the young company, which has raised $154 million USD since its founding in 2023. Moonvalley raised a $70-million USD seed round co-led by General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures to fund its research and development in 2024.
A Moonvalley spokesperson declined to disclose if anyone is joining the company’s board as a result of the round. They also declined to comment on if Moonvalley had any Canadian investors, noting the company had only disclosed American investors to date.
Moonvalley said the funding reflects an industry shift to prioritize AI that “respects intellectual property.” Last week, the company announced the general availability of Marey, its foundational AI video model trained only on licensed, high-resolution footage.
“No scraped content. No user submissions. No legal gray zones,” its website reads.
Developed by ex-DeepMind and Google Research employees, the model is designed for filmmakers with cinematography in mind, Moonvalley says. The company claims its AI tool can turn 2D images into a 3D environment with promptable “camera” positioning, transfer motion from reference videos to generated videos, and control movement in generated videos through drawing rather than text prompting.
The company was founded by CEO Naeem Talukdar and COO John Thomas, both from Toronto, as well as chief scientific officer Mateusz Malinowski, vice-president of research Mikołaj Bińkowski, and Bryn Mooser. The company has approximately 100 employees, with around one dozen based in Canada, the spokesperson said.
Mooser, a two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker for his documentary shorts, leads Moonvalley’s movie-making unit Asteria Labs, which he co-founded with his partner, actress Natasha Lyonne.
“This funding proves you don’t have to choose between powerful technology and responsible development,” Talukdar said in a statement.
Moonvalley’s focus on legally cleared training content comes as major AI companies around the world like OpenAI, Meta, and Toronto-based Cohere deal with a litany of lawsuits alleging large-scale copyright infringement through unauthorized data scraping to train AI models. Vancouver-based media tech firm RHEI, formerly known as BBTV, launched its own platform earlier this year to help digital content creators license their content for training AI models.
RELATED: Outcome of copyright case against Cohere uncertain but likely “precedent-setting”: expert
Actors and creative workers have been fighting AI creeping into their fields in recent years. In the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, the union representing Hollywood actors and others in the television, film, and radio industries sought protections from the technology, namely in consent and compensation for the use of AI-generated likeness, though Rolling Stone has reported actors still feel pressured to sign those rights away anyways. In a statement, CAA head of strategic development Alexandra Shannon said that “ethically led and talent-friendly applications of AI are a top priority” for the talent agency.
“Moonvalley understands that AI should empower artists, not undermine them, and we are excited to help bring this new technology to our clients and the entertainment community at large,” Shannon said.
The fresh capital will help Moonvalley scale to meet enterprise demand for its model, the company said. This includes expanding its licensed content library, improving developer access, building out requested features for partners, and hiring the needed engineering and support teams for enterprise-scale deployments.
Feature image courtesy Moonvalley.