London-based startup Imaginario AI has recently secured a pre-seed investment round totaling €900k. This funding, led by 216 Capital and supported by Techstars, Comcast, Blue Lake VC, and Earthling VC, along with strategic angels including AI engineers from Meta and Google, marks a significant step forward for the company.
Imaginario AI specializes in empowering businesses to streamline their video search and curation workflows through a potent vector-based API and a user-friendly no-code platform. The core AI technology driving Imaginario AI’s platform originated in the United States during its participation in the Comcast Lift Labs Accelerator powered by Techstars, boasting an acceptance rate of less than 1%.
Conventional methods of organizing and searching video content rely on timestamping and labels, which often necessitate manual application, leading to maintenance challenges, inaccuracies, and error susceptibility. Additionally, most online video searches are limited to auto-generated transcripts, restricting the search to keywords. Imaginario AI’s innovative technology replaces these systems, enabling comprehensive searchability across visuals, sound, and dialogue in entire video libraries with minimal processing and no human intervention.
The company aims to leverage the latest AI breakthroughs to revolutionize video content, leveraging a groundbreaking platform and API to comprehend and curate videos at scale, making them easily searchable and adaptable without technical complexity or reliance on metadata. Achieving this feat involves an AI system that translates human-recognizable elements—such as objects, sounds, actions, and emotions—into mathematical objects for seamless search, curation, and modification.
Imaginario AI’s flagship product caters to content creators by automating the discovery, clipping, and reframing of video content for various social media platforms. Already adopted by several Hollywood studios, the platform has reported over a 60% reduction in the time required for selecting, editing, and repurposing traditional broadcast videos and feature films for social media. Smaller content creators have also embraced the platform, which offers plans starting at $34 per month, to automate the creation of shareable moments from podcasts and other long-form conversational content.
Founded in 2021 by Jose M. Puga, CEO, who boasts extensive experience in managing video services for esteemed companies like the BBC, Sky, and Warner Bros Discovery, alongside Dr. Abdelhak Loukkal PhD, CTO, renowned for research and development in AI solutions for robotic perception and autonomous driving, utilized by Softbank Robotics and Renault.
Puga expressed excitement about the recent fundraising, highlighting the potential for further product development. He emphasized Imaginario AI’s vision of simplifying user experiences and automating specific tasks for media supply chains, production, and marketing teams using video AI agents. These agents could generate multiple video compilations, custom reels for diverse social media platforms, enrich extensive content libraries, or identify sensitive scenes for removal before broadcasting across regions—all from a simple text prompt.
Recent reports indicate a 24% surge in global digital video consumption, constituting 82% of all Internet traffic, according to Cisco. Simultaneously, investment in artificial intelligence has seen exponential growth, rising from 11% of VC funding dollars in 2022 to 26% in 2023. However, a majority of AI research predominantly revolves around written inputs and outputs.
Puga believes that within 5 to 10 years, companies, not just those in video-heavy industries, will heavily rely on personalized AI agents for specialized video tasks and streamlined workflow coordination. He envisions these agents as creative digital twins offering tailored recommendations based on individual tastes and styles. Imaginario AI aims to be at the forefront of this transformative shift, anticipating the convergence of click-and-point software with conversational AI agents, revolutionizing human interactions with media.
