AI-based avatar (clone) development startup "Pickle" announced on the 5th that it has secured a total of 6 billion won in seed funding from domestic and international venture capital (VC) firms. This round included participation from BASS and U.S.-based angel investors such as Level Fund and Pioneer Fund, as well as Y Combinator graduates Cool Beer Taga and Nate Madison. Earlier, Pickle received pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, NFX, and Crew Capital.
Pickle, established in September last year, is an AI startup that provides the "AI Self" service, which accurately replicates users' faces and voices in real-time without the need for a camera, based on the vision of "Building the Infrastructure for your AI-powered Online-me."
Users can instantly create clones of various appearances that can be used for video conferencing, social media, and live streaming by scanning their face for 6 seconds. Pickle's self-developed voice and video generation foundation model implements an ultra-low latency environment, minimizing the delay between video and audio, and precisely preserving users' expressions and personalities with its identity maintenance algorithm. Additionally, it has an anti-abuse module for deepfakes.
Pickle has seen explosive growth, with an influx of 200 new users each day last month, resulting in a fivefold increase in user numbers in just one month. Among all users, 70% are distributed in the United States and 20% in Europe, with an average of more than five meetings or online gatherings utilizing Pickle avatars each week.
In the previous year, Pickle attracted global market expectations regarding its innovation and growth potential by receiving investment from the prominent Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator and being selected for the YC batch program.
Park Chae-geun, CEO of Pickle, said, "Generative video AI models are evolving faster than ever," and added, "This seed investment will make Pickle the most everyday yet innovative AI product for people to express themselves and communicate with others."
Lee Sang-jun, co-founder who joined Pickle this year, said, "We will introduce Pickle 2.0 in July to expand our user base and create a data flywheel by developing our model in collaboration with the AI research team to be established in San Francisco, based on the data we have acquired."