Animaj, a French startup leveraging generative AI to boost the production of animated content for kids, has raised €75m in debt and equity to double down on its technology as the media industry increasingly adopts AI.
The Paris-based startup, which launched in 2022, has developed a generative AI tool to speed up the process of turning ideas into animation, to generate content for kids for a range of platforms including YouTube, Disney+, Prime Video and Spotify.
“AI is really splitting the industry in two between those who don’t want to hear about it and those who have understood if they want to exist in future, they need to adapt,” Animaj cofounder Sixte de Vauplane tells Sifted.
“Even just a year ago we were preaching alone in the desert. But now we’re seeing creatives who have won Oscars and who want to work with companies that are generative AI-first.”
The new fundraise was led by US media investor HarbourView Equity Partners and French public bank Bpifrance Large Venture. It included participation from JPMorgan, US VCs Left Lane and Marquee Ventures and French investors XAnge and Daphni. Luxembourg firm Boostrap Europe also joined the round.
It brings the total debt and equity raised by Animaj to €175m.
Gen AI-first
Animaj identifies and acquires high-potential franchises and uses AI to boost the production of content around these brands in various formats, such as series, music, videogames and licensed products.
It includes a strong focus on platforms most popular with kids: YouTube represented 56% of the company’s revenues in the past 12 months, says de Vauplane.
The startup has acquired three franchises so far — French nursery rhymes channel HeyKids, German educational show Kidibli and Spanish comedy series Pocoyo. De Vauplane says two more will be announced in the next few months.
While the technology doesn’t intervene at the ideation stage, it supports production by transforming text and sketches into animation. The company says this reduces production times by 85%.
A shifting market
Three years after launch, Animaj is registering 22bn views annually on YouTube and has 242m monthly users. The company has always been profitable, and notched €20m in revenues in 2024.
De Vauplane says this success reflects a significant shift in the way children consume content, away from traditional mediums like TV and towards platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
“We have to capitalise on the momentum in the market,” he says. “The shift in media consumption is exponential. It’s a market evolving so fast that we need to take these market shares quickly.”
The new funds will be used to multiply the amount of content produced by the startup by acquiring more IP, with plans to reach a dozen franchises in the next two years.
Much of this expansion will target the US, Animaj’s largest market representing about a third of the company’s revenue.
“Half of the entertainment market is in the US,” says de Vauplane. “So we want the US to represent over 60% of our business in the next three years.”
Animaj plans to open an office across the Atlantic in the coming months and hire a team dedicated to local distribution and monetisation strategies. The startup currently has a team of 60 employees across offices in Paris and Madrid.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/animaj-75m-series-c/
