Largo.ai, an AI-driven analytics platform for the film, TV and advertising industries, has secured $7.5 million in investment. Sylvester Stallone is among the backers of the company, which just closed its Series A financing round.
The AI firm attracted the attention of high-profile investors. The most recent financing round was co-led by Los Angeles-based TI Capital and Switzerland and Los Angeles-based QBIT Capital.
Funding round participants include Boston’s Atreides Management, former Vice Chairman Activision Blizzard Thomas Tippl, and as well as an investment from Swiss private equity firm DAA Capital.
“When we set out on this journey in 2020 for Largo.ai, the role of AI in filmmaking was confined to the streaming giants,” Sami Arpa, chief executive officer and co-founder, Largo.ai, stated. “Our mission was to level the playing field for the rest of industry, which has stayed more traditional to-date.”
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During the past two years, as technologies like ChatGPT have become embedded in peoples' everyday lives, the fear of AI has diminished, and its adoption curve is dramatically changing, according to Arpa.
Funding comes during a time when AI companies continue to discuss the technology with Hollywood. Joelle Pineau, vice president at AI research for Meta, spoke at the IAB ALM conference last week in Palm Desert, California. She spoke about Meta having conversations with the movie industry in Hollywood but stopped short of making any announcements.
Ron Howard, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, as well as Edward Norton, who has worked with AI for some time, also spoke at the IAB ALM conference. Norton co-founded market intelligence firm EDO.
Howard shared a story from George Lucas who in the past expressed excitement over how technology helped him realize creative visions that analog film could not. Howard expects AI will continue to push past boundaries of creativity.
Largo.ai works with more than 600 companies, including several Hollywood studios and large agencies. The plan is to expand on its core offering with the launch of its Version 3. The new version will provide actionable recommendations with its existing tools and generate early creative concepts that mimic how the content will look in the final production stages.
There have been some unusual investments and applications for AI, such as the one from Google announced Monday where researchers have developed self-healing asphalt using biomass and Google Cloud’s AI.
It’s a technology rooted in AI that literally “paves the way” to solve the U.K.’s pothole problem by creating more durable and sustainable roads.
Iain Burgess, director of public sector U.K., Google Cloud, announced the research about self-healing roads made from biomass waste. The research was conducted along with King’s College London, and Swansea University, along with scientists in Chile.
The asphalt can repair its own cracks over time, eliminating the need for manual maintenance, Burgess wrote in a post. It mimics “self-healing abilities of trees and some animals” by replicating regenerative qualities.
In laboratory experiments, researchers demonstrated the asphalt material could heal a microcrack in under an hour.