Can AI create an Oscar worthy film all on its own?

The rise of generative AI is the cause for this question. OpenAI’s Sora and its new Chinese rival Kling have propelled AI video generation to heights we never imagined before.

However, a movie isn’t just a video. Well, at least since the Charlie Chaplin days. It takes a whole lot of other constituents like music, sound effects, images, writing to create a watchable movie.

To explore this question, we delved deep into our real time company dataset to check out the AI startups that could perhaps come together to win an Oscar in the future.

To start our exploration, let’s take a look at the fastest growing companies:

The dominance of multimedia companies like Pika and Eleven Labs can be attributed due to their diverse content generation capabilities. Specialized companies focusing on image and music generation, such as Leonardo and Suno AI, also show significant growth, indicating strong niche markets. Overall, versatility in media types appears to be a key driver of higher growth rates within the industry.

Now that we’ve seen the growth of these startups, let’s see how investors are backing them.

Surprise, surprise – OpenAI leads the list with a whooping $11.3 BILLION in funding raised. The closest to OpenAI is Runway - a startup that offers multiple features like text to image generation, text to video, audio generation and more. 

Looking at the top 4 companies in the list, multimedia generation startups lead the way. 

Investors seem to have the same line of thought as us. These platforms that house multiple media generation capabilities hold the most promise to be world changing.

This might be insightful. But who are the people behind these startups? Where are they from?

Let’s take a look at the alma mater of the founders:

It looks like we can thank Harvard alumni for providing creative professionals with their daily dose of existential crisis. 

However, we know that your university isn't everything; where you work has a far greater impact.

So, here the previous companies of these founders:

Google, one of the earliest companies to undertake AI research and development has produced 10 of these founders. Most of them have worked as research scientists.

Note to investors: If you see an AI company founded by a research scientist, you might want to hear them out and if they are from Google or Google DeepMind, you should do a lot more than just hearing them out.

If you’ve made it this far, we’ve suggested some startups that might potentially be looking for investment.

This is done by analyzing the last funding date and the headcount growth percentage of these companies which indicate their intention to expand.

Pika AI, one of the multimedia generation startups that we saw earlier is rapidly expanding and has also raised funds this month (June). 

The same can be said for audio specific platforms - Suno and Udio. While Suno is the more established of the two, Udio’s features and offerings position it to be a fierce rival and a potential leader in the generative audio space. 

Earlier-funded companies show slower growth, except Eleven Labs and Runway, which are rapidly innovating to stay ahead of competition. Keep an eye on them.

From the data in this newsletter, which of these startups do you think will contribute to an AI made film winning an Oscar?

Our top picks: OpenAI Sora, Udio, Pika, Eleven Labs and Runway

About the data

The data seen above is from Crustdata - the most accurate realtime LinkedIn data source for growth and private equity investors. It indexes billions of public data points on companies every week to provide an edge over the private market.