London-based AI creative studio Wonder Studios has raised $12 million in seed funding to scale production amid a push to bring AI-generated content into the entertainment industry.
The round was led by Atomico, alongside existing investors LocalGlobe and Blackbird, and builds on Wonder’s pre-seed investment, which included executives from ElevenLabs, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI.
Wonder will use the fresh funds to double its engineering team and accelerate its push into IP ownership and original content production. The team recently produced an AI music video for Lewis Capaldi’s ‘Something in the Heavens’, created with DeepMind, YouTube, and Universal Music Group. Wonder also released its first original production, the “Beyond the Loop” anthology series.
Wonder is working on several commercial and original projects for release next year, including an upcoming documentary with Campfire Studios, the production company behind Netflix documentaries “The Menendez Brothers” and “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Campfire’s CEO Ross Dinerstein is an investor in the startup.
The drive for IP ownership emerges amid a wave of legal actions from Hollywood producers targeting AI companies — both for training models on their content and for generating outputs featuring copyrighted characters. Disney and Universal Studios, for example, have sued Chinese company MiniMax, as well as AI image generator Midjourney.
Wonder’s raise also comes as Netflix goes “all in” on generative AI as a way to make creatives more efficient at storytelling.
AI remains a divisive issue in entertainment, with artists concerned that tools powered by LLMs, which have often been trained on their work without consent, could threaten their livelihoods. OpenAI’s Sora 2 has come under particular criticism for reproducing actors’ likenesses without notice or consent.
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