AI Video Startup PixVerse Raises $439M at $2B Valuation

SINGAPORE: AI video startup PixVerse has raised a total of USD 439 million in its Series C funding round, pushing its valuation past USD 2 billion. The latest extension was led by Alibaba, with participation from investors including Mirae Asset, Eastern Bell Capital, BlueFocus, Lollapalooza Capital, and CloudAlpha.

Existing investors iGlobe Partners and LionX Ventures, the venture arm of OCBC, also joined the round. The first part of the Series C funding was led by CDH Investments in March. With the latest investment, PixVerse’s total funding has now crossed USD 550 million.

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The Singapore-based company operates under parent company AIsphere. It was founded in April 2023 by Wang Changhu, a former executive at ByteDance and Microsoft Research, along with company president Jaden Xie. The platform went viral in late 2024 when a “Venom transformation” effects template racked up a billion views on TikTok. Today, PixVerse says it has more than 150 million registered users across 177 countries, making it one of the fastest-growing AI video platforms in the market.

However, the company still faces challenges. While user registrations have grown rapidly, its monthly active users remain around 15 million, a figure that has seen little growth over the past nine months. Revenue is another area where PixVerse trails competitors. The company’s last disclosed annual revenue was USD 40 million, significantly lower than some rivals in the AI video generation market.

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The latest funding round is expected to support PixVerse’s move into a new area of AI. The company is betting heavily on its new technology called R1, which it describes as the world’s first real-time world model. Unlike traditional AI video tools that generate a completed video clip, R1 creates environments that respond instantly to user actions. This allows experiences to change dynamically while users interact with them.

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Building on R1, PixVerse has also introduced a Game Engine that lets users create games using natural language commands. Instead of writing code, creators can describe what they want, and the AI generates interactive experiences. According to CEO Wang Changhu, the technology makes it possible for virtual worlds to be generated continuously rather than being pre-built in advance.

PixVerse currently charges USD 4.80 per minute for image-to-video generation. The company also plans to launch interactive livestreams featuring AI-generated characters later this year. As for the fresh funding, it will primarily be used to expand research and development efforts and hire talent across engineering, product, and go-to-market teams.