Singapore-based video generation startup PixVerse has closed a Series C extension raising $439 million, pushing its valuation past $2 billion.
The company plans to use the capital to expand its world model offering and reach customers across more geographies. It previously closed an initial Series C round in March led by CDH Investments, with Bloomberg estimating that figure at around $300 million.
Investors in this extension include Alibaba, Lollapalooza Capital, Ivy Capital, Grand Mount Capital, Eastern Bell Capital, Mirae Asset, BlueFocus, and CloudAlpha. They join returning backers iGlobe Partners and OCBC’s LionX Ventures.
Founded in 2023 by Wang Changhu and Jaden Xie, the firm draws on Changhu’s previous work on computer vision at ByteDance and Xie’s time as an executive director at investment firm Lighthouse Capital.
The startup offers multiple models. A V-Series handles consumer and API use, while a C-Series targets professional film and commercial workflows. An R-Series of world models for game development and world building was released earlier this year.
Users can generate videos in up to 4k resolution with audio included. The consumer product has over 150 million registered users and more than 15 million monthly active users. The company declined to specify how many of them are paying but charges $4.80 per minute for image-to-video generation.
Xie believes that despite the huge opportunity for video generation to succeed, only a few companies are making progress in the market.
“OpenAI exited the business when they shut down Sora 2. Other companies like Meta and Tencent are not able to create high-quality video models. So there are only a few companies that can meet the quality bar,” he told TechCrunch.
He said that there is equal opportunity in the consumer and enterprise markets as users are creating videos for fun and also consuming short video content made with AI, while enterprises are using video generation for creative, learning, and marketing use cases.
Saying that the startup’s model produces a “high-quality” output is hardly a unique qualifier. Xie mentioned that its core strength lies in labeling.
“We think the key difference is not in data, but how you label it, because data is available everywhere. My co-founder worked at ByteDance, where he built core visual understanding technology behind TikTok using AI. Using this tech, TikTok was able to label data accurately, and build a strong recommendation algorithm. This experience comes in handy when building a video generation platform,” Xie said.
The company has big ambitions this year. It wants to expand its enterprise outreach across the globe. The startup already has a deal with its investor Alibaba to deploy the video generation features.
In terms of product roll out, it plans to launch a new V-series model for video generation, and release a new version of its world model this year. It has 150 employees across offices in Singapore, Beijing and Shanghai. With the new funding PixVerse aims to hire more researchers and people in go-to-market function.
Despite its confidence in its own models and products, the video market is heating up. There are players like ByteDance with its Seedance model, former Tencent AI head Dr. Wei Liu’s Video Rebirth and Kling AI from Asia. In the west, there are competitors like Midjourney, Runway and Luma. Multiple companies, including Lann YeCunn and Fei Fei Li’s startups, are building world models.
What it means
For people making content, the immediate change is access to higher quality tools without needing deep technical expertise. The focus on labeling suggests that output will be more consistent and easier to control, which helps creators who need reliability for professional work. The pricing remains clear per minute, keeping the barrier to entry low while the valuation rise signals that capital is still flowing to companies that can prove they can build usable video models.
