20s Woman Achieves 'Daebak' with 400 Billion Won Valuation Just 7 Months After Startup Launch

Two Chinese-American Women PhD Students at Stanford University Startups
Generating and Editing 3D Videos, Animation, and Films

An artificial intelligence (AI) startup has attracted industry attention by being valued at nearly 400 billion won just seven months after its founding.

According to Forbes on the 24th (local time), AI startup Pika, based in Silicon Valley, recently raised $55 million (71.6 billion won) in funding.

Pikalabs Co-founder Demi Guo
Photo by Demi Guo X account capture

This funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital (VC) firms.

Participants included Adam D'Angelo, founder of the knowledge-sharing platform Quora and board member of OpenAI; Nat Friedman, former CEO of the software development platform GitHub; and Alex Chung, co-founder of Giphy.

According to foreign media reports, Pika Labs was valued between $260 million and $390 million at the time of this investment.

Video made with Pika [Photo by Pika X account capture]

On the 29th of last month, Pika Labs launched its AI video generation service application, "Pika 1.0." By inputting text, users can create and edit 3D videos, animations, movies, and more. It gained attention for its natural movements and realistic video quality.

The usage of "Pika 1.0" is simple. Users input the desired phrase, and within seconds, a 3D animation is instantly created. Users can select the type of video and adjust its length. Additionally, existing video elements can be modified or replaced.

[Photo by Pica Instagram capture]

While competing with generative AI platforms such as Runway and Stability AI, Pika has the advantage of being able to extend the length of existing videos and transform them into various styles like "animation."

Currently, Pika has about 600,000 users. Approximately one million video contents are generated weekly.

Pika was co-founded by Demi Guo (25) and Chenlin Meng (27), Chinese-American PhD candidates at Stanford University's AI lab, born in 1995.

Before studying at Stanford, Guo worked as an engineer in Meta's AI research division, while Meng has authored numerous AI research papers, including those related to generative AI.