Hedra
AI video platform that generates expressive digital characters from text and images.
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA
- Latest Round
- Series A
- Est. Valuation
- ~$200M
Investment Thesis
Hedra is an AI video generation platform specializing in digital character creation. The company builds foundation models for generating expressive, animated characters — most famously powering the viral 'talking baby podcasts' trend.
Since launch, Hedra has attracted over 3 million users who have collectively created more than 10 million videos. The platform hit $3.5 million in revenue with a lean 32-person team.
AI can generate impressive video clips, but characters still can't speak or emote convincingly — lip sync drifts, expressions feel dead, and gestures look robotic across every tool.
Foundation models for digital character creation that generate realistic lip syncing, facial expressions, and gestures from just a photo and audio clip — powering the viral talking baby podcasts trend.
Convincing human characters are the missing piece holding back AI video for marketing, entertainment, and social media — and Hedra cracked the hardest unsolved problem in generative video.
Nearly 3 million users have created over 10 million videos, reaching $3.5M in revenue with a lean 32-person team — proving massive consumer demand for expressive AI characters.
Michael Lingelbach (CEO) and Alexander Bergman (CTO), both Stanford PhDs in neural rendering and 3D vision, focused exclusively on character animation — the hardest frontier in AI video.