Moonvalley, an AI firm known for using a model trained on fully licensed content, has raised $84 million in new financing from backers including CAA and Comcast Ventures.
The funding round brings Moonvalley’s total funding to $154 million. General Catalyst led the latest round, with participants also including CoreWeave, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator.
Moonvalley last week launched Marey, a video offering based on licensed IP and built in collaboration with subsidiary Asteria Film Co. The company is looking to cement relationships in the entertainment industry, whose creative community has been unsettled by the rise of AI over the past few years. Disney and NBCUniversal recently filed a lawsuit against AI firm Midjourney for what it says is unlawful use of its materials.
Ed Ulbrich, a visual effects veteran whose credits include Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, told Deadline in a recent interview that Moonvalley’s ethical approach to AI persuaded him to join the company in a senior role. “I was just compelled” to come aboard, he said, by the company’s “clean model of an ethically sourced, ethically trained, a legit, proper thing, you know, no stolen pixels, no scraping of the internet. It’s done in a great way. And it is so important that it happened.”
Co-founder and CEO Naeem Talukdar said in a press release Monday that the new financing influx “proves you don’t have to choose between powerful technology and responsible development.” Moonvalley, he added, is “building world-class models while respecting the creative community, and these partners will help us give studios and creators a real alternative to unlicensed models.”
Allison Goldberg, Managing Partner of Comcast Ventures, said Moonvalley’s “combining of technical excellence with respect for content creators aligns with how we think about innovation in our industry.”
Alexandra Shannon, Head of Strategic Development, CAA, said the models favored by Moonvalley are a “top priority” for the agency giant. “We see an opportunity with these emerging tools and technologies, and having a set of partners who are aligned in the ethics behind AI is critical,” she said.
