Competition in AI video generation heats up as DeepMind alums unveil Haiper

AI-powered video generation is a hot market on the back of OpenAI’s releasing the Sora model last month. Two DeepMind alums, Yishu Miao and Ziyu Wang, have publicly released their video-generation tool Haiper with its own AI model underneath.

Miao, who was previously working at TikTok in the Global Trust & Safety team, and Wang, who has worked as a research scientist for both DeepMind and Google, started working on the company in 2021 and formally incorporated it in 2022.

The pair has expertise in machine learning and started working on the problem of 3D reconstruction using neural networks. After training on video data, Miao mentioned to TechCrunch on a call that they found out that video generation was a more fascinating problem than 3D reconstruction. That’s why Haiper ended up focusing on video generation roughly six months ago.

Haiper has raised $13.8 million in a seed round led by Octopus Ventures with participation from 5Y Capital. Before that, angels like Phil Blunsom and Nando de Freitas helped the company raise a $5.4 million pre-seed round in April 2022.

Video-generation service

Users can go to Haiper’s site and start generating videos for free by typing in text prompts. However, there are certain limitations. You can only generate a two-second HD video and slightly lower-quality video of up to four seconds.

The site also has features like animating your image and repainting your video in a different style. Plus, the company is working to introduce capabilities like the ability to extend a video.

Miao said that the company aims to keep these features free in order to build a community. He noted that it is “too early” in the startup’s journey to think about building a subscription product around video generation. However, it has collaborated with companies like JD.com to explore commercial use cases.

We used one of the original Sora prompts to generate a sample video: “Several giant wooly mammoths approach treading through a snowy meadow, their long wooly fur lightly blows in the wind as they walk, snow-covered trees and dramatic snow-capped mountains in the distance, mid-afternoon light with wispy clouds and a sun high in the distance creates a warm glow, the low camera view is stunning capturing the large furry mammal with beautiful photography, depth of field.”