Imaginario AI, a startup that empowers companies to build video search and curation workflows with a powerful vector-based API and no-code platform, announced a pre-seed investment round of €900k led by 216 Capital, with participation from Techstars, Comcast, Blue Lake VC and Earthling VC, plus an impressive roster of strategic angels including AI engineers from Meta and Google.
The underlying AI powering Imaginario AI’s platform was developed in the United States while participating in the Comcast Lift Labs Accelerator powered by Techstars, a mediatech incubator with a less-than-1% acceptance rate.
Traditionally, video content is organised and searched through systems of timestamping and labels, all of which are applied manually in a painstaking process which is hard to maintain, inaccurate and prone to errors. Meanwhile most online video can be searched only through auto-generated transcripts, limiting video search to keywords. Imaginario AI’s technology replaces both systems, allowing entire video libraries to be searchable across visuals, sound, and dialogue with minimal processing and no human intervention.
Now, London-based Imaginario AI is seeking to bring the latest AI breakthroughs to video content, using a new breed of platform and API to curate and understand video content at scale, making it searchable and transformable without technical complexity and the need for metadata. This is achieved through an AI system which turns human-recognisable elements (such as objects, sounds, actions and emotions) into mathematical objects, which can be searched, curated and modified.
Imaginario AI’s first product, which allows content creators to automatically discover, clip, and reframe video content for social media platforms, is already in use by several Hollywood studios, who have reported a more-than-60% reduction in the time taken to select, edit and repurpose traditional broadcast video and feature films for social platforms. Smaller content creators are also using the platform, which starts at $34 per month, to automate the creation of shareable moments from podcasts and other long-form conversational content.
Imaginario AI was founded in 2021 by two experts who combine over 25 years of expertise in video and multimodal AI: Jose M. Puga, CEO, has managed the development and growth of video services for companies such as the BBC, Sky and Warner Bros Discovery, and Dr. Abdelhak Loukkal PhD, CTO, who researched and developed AI solutions in robotic perception and autonomous driving, used to date by Softbank Robotics and Renault.
Jose M. Puga commented on the new fundraising: “This is an incredibly exciting time for us and we’re thrilled to have attracted a real A-list of investors for our pre-seed funding. This capital will be used to further develop our existing products and create video AI agents which will simplify Imaginario AI’s user experience and automate specific tasks for media supply chain, production and marketing teams. For example, from a simple text prompt, we will be able to create multiple video compilations, custom reels for any social media platform, enrich thousands of hours of content, or identify sensitive scenes for removal prior to broadcast across regions.”
Global digital video consumption grew 24% in the previous year, according to a recent report, and now accounts for 82% of all Internet traffic according to Cisco. Meanwhile, investment in artificial intelligence also grew at an exponential rate, from 11% of VC funding dollars in 2022, to 26% in 2023. However, the majority of AI research continues to be confined to written inputs and outputs.
Puga added: “We believe that in 5 to 10 years companies, even beyond video-heavy industries, will rely on personal AI agents for specialised video tasks and efficient workflow coordination. These will be your creative digital twins, who will provide you with recommendations based on your taste and style better than anyone. In the next few years, click and point software will merge with conversational AI agents, bringing new ways for humans to interact with media, and Imaginario AI will be at the forefront of this change”.
