London-based Haiper AI is being sold for parts months after Microsoft poached the video-generation startup’s two cofounders.
Founded in 2021 by Google DeepMind alumni Yishu Miao and Ziyu Wang, Haiper emerged from stealth with a $13.8m funding round last year — and was briefly touted as a European rival to AI video tools developed by industry leaders like OpenAI and DeepMind.
Haiper’s future was thrown into doubt after Sifted revealed cofounders Miao and Wang had quit the company to join Microsoft AI, taking one of the company’s top engineers with them.
Now NetMind.AI has acquired Haiper’s video-generation model for an undisclosed sum, with plans to recruit a number of its employees. London-based NetMind offers a decentralised platform for users to share computing resources and develop apps at scale.
Haiper’s collapse comes amid a wider consolidation of the generative AI sector. Tech giant Meta made headlines this week after agreeing to pay $15bn for a 49% stake in Scale AI. Meanwhile Salesforce reportedly paid more than $150m for London-based AI startup Convergence last month.
Stacie Chan, previously VP of business at Haiper, is joining NetMind in a similar role. She tells Sifted the NetMind deal is a positive outcome which avoids “either the product or team getting canned”, although contract negotiations are ongoing.
“Things don’t always go to plan. Was this the next chapter? We couldn’t have anticipated this but we’re very happy with the outcome,” says Chan, who previously worked as a partnerships manager at Google.
Asked about wider consolidation in the GenAI space, she tells Sifted: “These larger tech giants have infinite resources and want to grab the best talent. If I were back at Google I would absolutely be exploring these kinds of deals all the time.”
Octopus Ventures, previously Haiper’s lead investor, declined to comment.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/haiper-ai-sold-for-parts/
