Haiper emerges from stealth with $13.8M seed for video-generative AI

This week video-generative AI platform Haiper came out of stealth mode, announcing a $13.8 million seed round led by Octopus Ventures.This brings Haiper’s total funding to $19.2 million ahead of it, raising a Series A round in 2024.

Haiper was founded in late 2021 in London by Dr Yishu Miao and Dr Ziyu Wang (CTO), both with PhDs in Machine Learning from Oxford University and former Researchers at DeepMind. 

The company has developed an all-in-one visual foundation model for publishers, studios and individuals. The model enables everyone, even those without technical training and experience, to easily generate high-quality video content.  Over the next few months, Haiper will develop and release a series of large trained models. By playing, experimenting, and providing feedback, Haiper’s users will grow the power and potential of its proprietary visual foundation model.

For video-generative AI to reach the next stage, companies will need to scale models and the data behind. Each video frame carries an array of minute visual information, including light, motion, texture, and interactions between objects. From a splash of water to a linen shirt moving in the wind, generative AI that can intuitively understand and replicate the emotional and physical elements of reality will then be able to create visually stunning content and true to life.

Haiper’s specialised team is training its perceptual foundation model with this particular aim in mind, with distributed data processing and model training infrastructure designed to be scaled up.

With this, Haiper’s advancements in video content represent a step towards a form of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), AI capable of internalising and reflecting human-like comprehension of the world.

As Haiper scales, the company’s distributed infrastructure will allow its perceptual foundation model to go beyond content creation. AI that can understand, interpret, and generate complex video content will also possess a deep understanding of the world around it and have applications across other industries, from robotics to transportation.

Dr Yishu Miao, co-founder and CEO of Haiper, comments: 

“Our end goal is to build an AGI with full perceptual abilities, which has boundless potential to assist with creativity. 
Our visual foundation model will be a leap forward in AI’s ability to deeply understand the physics of the world and replicate the essence of reality in the videos it generates. 

Such advancements lay the groundwork for AI that can understand, embrace, and enhance human storytelling.

Our time in stealth was spent building up crucial distributed data processing and model training infrastructure, which we’re excited to use this funding to scale.”

Rebecca Hunt, Partner at Octopus Ventures, adds: 

“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. 

Haiper's deeply technical foundations have enabled it to innovate and make breakthroughs at a pace we haven’t seen in the AI Video space; it is sure to become one of Europe’s big AI players. 

Lead image: Haiper. Photo: uncredited.