Argil, a French video generation engine for the creator economy, has raised €4.9 million in pre-seed and seed funding as it emerges from the Y Combinator incubator. The investment will let the company enable anyone to become a creator with their own AI video clone.
The company raised €3.9 million in a seed round led by EQT Ventures, which recently backed Biolevate and Candela, with participation from renowned Youtuber Kwebblekop, who has over 15 million subscribers using Argil to grow his own Youtube channel, and Charles Gorintin, co-founder & CTO of Alan and co-founding advisor of Mistral AI. This follows a pre-seed round of €1 million from Seedcamp and Axeleo raised last year.
Revolutionises video content creation with AI
Founded in 2023 by Brivael Le Pogam and Laodis Menard in France, Argil revolutionises content creation with an AI-driven platform that enables creators to produce high-quality, engaging video content efficiently. Its core feature allows users to create hyper-realistic AI avatars by cloning themselves from uploaded videos. These avatars can speak multiple languages, making global outreach effortless.
Argil’s user-friendly tools include pre-editing features, templates, and access to a library of virtual avatars, streamlining the process of transforming text-based and audio content into captivating videos.
Tailored for today’s video-centric landscape, Argil addresses creators’ need to meet rising quality standards without the traditional time and cost barriers. Unlike robotic avatars in the market, the company’s avatars showcase humanlike expressions and body language, enhancing relatability and audience engagement. Trusted by creators with millions of followers and even iconic estates like Audrey Hepburn’s, Argil empowers businesses and influencers to thrive in the competitive world of social media and digital storytelling.
Subscription model for businesses
Argil offers a subscription model tailored for content creators in addition to the free plan. This subscription provides access to its centralised platform, which combines AI-driven video and audio production tools. Key features include creating hyper-realistic personal avatars, multilingual content generation, automated video editing with captions and transitions, and more. The business model is an ultra-low subscription fee starting at $1/ minute of video and videos are created and can be posted in minutes instead of days.
Laodis Menard, CEO and Co-Founder, said: “I produced a lot of video content after leading product marketing at a French unicorn. I loved it, but found creating videos was becoming increasingly costly and time-intensive. I was also lucky to be confident in front of the camera, a luxury not everyone has. At Argil, we want to democratise the production process to allow anyone to create engaging videos with realistic avatars that bring their original vision to life; AI allows us to do this quickly and cheaply. Demand for video content will continue to grow, and we need novel technology such as AI to fulfill this demand. We’ll make creating an engaging video as easy as writing a tweet.”
Ted Persson, Partner at EQT Ventures, added: “Argil is perfectly positioned to benefit from two megatrends – AI and the creator economy, the latter of which has helped to make synthetic media one of the fastest adopted forms of technology in the past year. We are hugely impressed by the team’s practical experience operating within this field and their ability to pack so much technology into a sleek platform the whole team has enjoyed demoing! We welcome Laodis and Brivael to the portfolio.”
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