
A year ago, generating lifelike characters — complete with voices, expressions, and motion — from just an image felt impossible. Today, nearly 3 million Hedra users have done exactly that.  

AI is changing content creation. Not just how things are made, but who can make them and how fast ideas can move. But getting generative video to actually *be useful* for people is a different challenge. It needs to slot seamlessly into your workflow, allow for precise control, and let you intuitively bring characters to life.

That’s what we’re focused on at Hedra. Building a platform to make character-centric video effortless.

### How we got here

We launched out of stealth in June 2024 with **Character-1**, one of the first high-speed, controllable video foundation models focused entirely on character-driven storytelling. The demand blew past what we expected.

Rather than chase every opportunity, we made a decision to stay focused and go deep. We doubled down on generating engaging characters performances — eventually leading to the recent release of **Character-3**, the first **omnimodal foundation model** in production for AI character video.

<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1084642335?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" title="Hedra Raises a $32M Series A"></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>

### We also launched Hedra Studio

A web-based creative platform that lets anyone — from individual creators to marketing teams —turn their ideas into expressive video content in just a few clicks. Along the way, we've grown to around **3 million users**, powered over 10 million videos, and helped everyone from TikTok comedians to Fortune 500 marketers bring their stories to life.

### The raise

We’re excited to share that we’ve raised $32M in Series A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz's Infrastructure fund, with Matt Bornstein joining the board. Additionally, existing investors including a16z speedrun, Abstract, and Index Ventures will be participating in the round. 

This round brings our total funding to $44M and gives us the ability to scale. We’ll grow the team (carefully), invest more in foundation model training, and continue delivering the kind of products we’d want to use ourselves.

But more than anything, it’s a chance to keep building with intention. No gimmicks, no shortcuts — just the platform that helps people and teams create what they want. 

### What comes next

While the product keeps evolving, our mindset hasn’t: build intentionally, stay close to the people using it, and focus on making something that is valuable.

We’re still a small, deeply hands-on team. We care about the edge cases, the friction points, the things that break the flow of creativity. Because it’s not just about impressive outputs, but rather about making the process feel easier. Faster. More possible.

Whether it’s turning a script into a character performance or an idea into a full campaign, we’re here to make that path smoother. And we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s helped shape it so far.

More soon.

P.S. We’re hiring\! If you, or someone in your network, is looking for their next opportunity, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our open roles at [hedra.com/careers](https://www.hedra.com/careers).



Announcing Hedra’s Series A


Hedra is building the next generation of storytelling technology to empower content creators and enterprise marketers to tell narratives at scale. We're starting by releasing Character-1, the fastest video foundation model on the market. It offers a longer-form generation and brings a new level of expressive control over character-centric video.

Until now, creators faced tradeoffs for control and speed via generative video models. Last month, Character-1, our research preview, showed that this is no longer the case. The speed and ease of use are designed to turbocharge the efficiency of content creators and marketers.

Today, we’re excited to formally bring Hedra out of stealth and share that we’ve raised a $10M Seed from Index Ventures, Abstract, and A16Z Speedrun.

Since our release in June, more than 350,000 users have created over 1.6 million video generations on our platform. We continue to see an explosion of creativity: minute-long dramatic monologues, a new wave of digital influencers, the rise of the AI popstar, marketing videos, and educational content built by teachers. We’ve seen viral hits topping Reddit, Instagram, and more. We've done all this while maintaining a leading moderation filter including screening language for violence. This was by design — we built Hedra with safety in mind and think it’s an important part of how this technology is used. We’re using first mover’s advantage to deploy models responsibly, with a leading moderation filter including screening language for violence, hate, and celebrity images.

Our team is now focused on building a new type of multimodal studio that compliments our foundation model. Hedra will integrate story, sound, and video generation into one unified workflow tool, allowing users to create customizable digital avatars or characters with unique appearances, voices, and personalities. Our platform will not just streamline content creation — it will empower brands and creators to captivate audiences in ways inaccessible before Character-1.

We founded Hedra after leaving our PhDs at Stanford and after working in the industry at NVIDIA, Google, and Meta. As artificial intelligence moved mainstream, we saw a massive opportunity to create a new platform that allowed content creators, marketers, and businesses to leverage generative video workflows.
We’re grateful to our investors at A16Z Speedrun, Abstract, and Index Ventures as well as Jon Barron, David Benhaim, Kevin Hartz, Greg Mark, Robyn Peterson, Nikhila Ravi, John Rogovin, Bilawal Sidhu, and Outset Capital for their belief in Hedra’s team, technology, and ambition. We’re just getting started. We’re thrilled to invite creators from around the world to join us. We can’t wait to see what you make!

— Michael and Alex


Blog

Announcing Hedra’s Series A

Introducing Hedra, the video creation platform, with $10M in funding from Index Ventures, Abstract, and A16Z Speedrun