Hedra, a US-based AI video generation platform known for creating over 10 million lifelike videos, has announced a $32 million Series A funding round. This brings the company’s total funding to $43 million, with the round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Infrastructure fund. a16z Infra is known for backing transformative infrastructure technologies that redefine content creation.
The round also saw participation from a16z Speedrun, Index Ventures, and Abstract, all of whom had backed Hedra in earlier stages. Their continued confidence reflects the company’s rapid user growth and its potential to redefine how video content is created and consumed at scale.
The latest capital infusion will primarily support team expansion and product development. Hedra plans to triple its workforce, currently at 20 employees, by the end of this year. The company also aims to enhance its Character-3 foundation model, invest in infrastructure to scale video rendering, and build enterprise-focused workflows that allow for faster, higher-quality video production.
Democratises AI-driven video creation
At a time when attention is the most valuable currency, video remains the most engaging form of content. However, traditional video production is slow, expensive, and resource-intensive, often costing thousands of dollars per minute. This creates a bottleneck for marketing teams under pressure to deliver timely, on-brand video content that resonates with audiences.
Hedra solves this challenge by offering Hedra Studio, a platform powered by Character-3, an omnimodal foundation model that integrates text, image, and audio. This allows users to generate high-quality, character-led videos from simple inputs. From cinematic spokespersons to animated mascots, Character-3 delivers performance-ready content in various styles, shot types, and tones, ideal for marketing teams needing to react quickly to real-time trends or cultural moments.
The origin of Hedra
Hedra’s origin is deeply personal for founder and CEO Michael Lingelbach. Before pursuing a PhD at Stanford, he spent years on stage as a theatre actor. That experience shaped his belief that characters are the heart of every story, and that believable digital characters would unlock the next era of storytelling.
What does Hedra do differently?
Unlike other video generation tools that offer simple avatars or talking heads, Hedra’s Character-3 foundation model provides true performance capability. It can portray nuanced expressions, dynamic speech, and camera-aware framing, allowing for realistic character presence. Its omnimodal architecture means the AI understands narrative flow, pacing, and visual emotion, a step closer to human storytelling. Users simply input prompts, and Hedra generates polished, professional videos tailored for marketing use.
What does the future hold?
Looking ahead, Hedra aims to be the creative canvas for the next generation of media, both for individual creators and global brands. With plans to enhance controllability, quality, and narrative logic in AI-generated characters, Hedra is pushing the boundaries of what AI storytelling can achieve. As the line between human and synthetic content continues to blur, the startup wants to ensure storytelling remains authentic, emotionally resonant, and accessible to all.
With AI-powered storytelling emerging as a critical tool for communication, Hedra’s expansion signals a new era in how digital content is created, one where budget and technical skill no longer limit creative ambition.
“We’re building the next generation of storytelling technology to empower content creators and enterprise marketers to tell narratives at scale on their own. Getting over the uncanny valley of compelling performance is the hardest frontier in video, and with our Character-3 foundation model, we’re devoted to crossing it,” said Michael Lingelbach, Founder and CEO of Hedra.
“This kind of creative agility is no longer just a nice-to-have — it’s essential for capturing attention in an increasingly crowded digital landscape,” added Michael Lingelbach. Unlike competitors focused solely on avatars or narrow use cases, Hedra delivers a unified solution that integrates story, sound, and video generation into one seamless workflow. Teams can create customisable digital characters with unique appearances, voices, and personalities and place them into dynamic scenes, empowering them to scale content production without sacrificing quality or originality.
“Hedra is building foundational technology for the next generation of media,” said Matt Bornstein, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Character-3 is a breakthrough model that integrates text, video, and audio to create highly controllable, expressive characters. If you want to create AI-driven actors, it’s the best model in the market by far. And that capability unlocks use cases across the creator economy, enterprise marketing, entertainment, and more. We’re absolutely thrilled to back Michael and the Hedra team as they build the foundation model for generative characters.”
