Mirage raises $75M to continue building models for its AI video editing app Captions

Mirage, the maker of AI-powered video editing app Captions, has secured $75 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. This significant investment will enable the startup to continue building and refining its AI models, further enhancing its video editing capabilities.

The startup has undergone significant changes in the past year, rebranding from Captions to Mirage to position itself as an AI lab that produces a range of models catering to industries such as advertising and marketing. Mirage has also trained a model specifically for pacing, framing, and attention dynamics in short videos. Additionally, the company has adopted a freemium model to better compete with apps like ByteDance's CapCut and Meta's Edits.

Mirage's co-founder and CEO Gaurav Misra has stated that the company aims to create more models, with a focus on "assembly intelligence," which involves combining different sources and components to create a video. The company has also developed an audio model that can preserve accents in generated videos, addressing a gap in accents noticed by international users.

According to data from analytics firm AppFigures, Captions has been downloaded over 3.2 million times in the last 365 days, generating $28.4 million in in-app revenue. The platform has been used to create over 200 million videos, attracting an international user base with only 25% of its revenue coming from the U.S.

Mirage's marketing suite is currently available on the web, while Captions offers a mobile-first editing suite. The company plans to merge these two platforms to better target small businesses looking to create marketing videos.