Entertainment Startups

ClassDojo offers a communication app connecting K-8 teachers, children, and families, letting them share moments from a child's day through photos, videos, and messages. The app serves kids, families, and teachers across 180 countries.

16 investors

D-ID builds AI and deep-learning technology for generating realistic AI personas, animating still photos, and producing videos through a platform and APIs aimed at creators and developers. It originally created a facial image de-identification solution to protect images and videos from facial recognition software.

10 investors

Karat Financial offers business banking, credit, and payment products aimed at creators and founders. The company is part of Y Combinator's W20 batch.

10 investors

CrowdVolt builds a marketplace platform that automates bookings and logistics for electronic dance music events and raves.

5 investors

The Ticket Fairy offers an event ticketing, marketing, and management platform that gives event promoters and venue managers tools to grow attendance, engagement, and revenue. It operates across Australia, New Zealand, India, the United States, the UK and Europe, with beta trials in East Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.

5 investors

Eternal is a Los Angeles NFT marketplace for trading Twitch streamer clips, a Y Combinator W20 company now listed as acquired.

4 investors

Familiar builds an AI video-translation and dubbing model that combines voice cloning and full-face lip-sync in a single system, preserving tone, expressions, and background audio, with support for real-time streams. It offers an API, an MCP server for agents, and a self-serve dashboard for creators and platforms translating video into multiple languages.

4 investors

Hype is a mobile application that tracks cryptocurrency trends, memecoins, and top traders in the crypto market.

4 investors

Koyal develops an AI platform that generates personalized video content from scripts or audio, serving music labels, podcasters, and production companies. The platform uses agentic AI to handle multilingual workflows, lip-sync synchronization, and consistent character rendering across video sequences.

4 investors

Shortbread develops AI-powered tools for creators to produce serialized visual stories (comics and web series) faster and at lower cost, then distributes them directly to consumers via a mobile platform. The platform combines an AI studio for rapid narrative creation with a reader destination featuring romance and dark fiction series.

4 investors

Sumugi is a 3D creation and 2D composition tool designed for visual storytellers including comic creators, writers, and hobbyists. The platform enables users to stage scenes with 3D character posing and lighting, then arrange them into 2D comic layouts and visual narratives.

4 investors

Absurd is a platform that generates AI-produced videos for brand and performance advertising, enabling companies to produce professional-quality content within days rather than traditional timelines.

3 investors

CreativeMode is an AI-powered platform that enables players to create Minecraft mods without coding knowledge by describing their ideas. It supports both Java and Bedrock editions and allows users to share their creations or publish them to an in-platform marketplace.

3 investors

DreamCraft offers a code-free platform, bundled with art assets, that lets anyone create, publish, and monetize video games. It serves aspiring and independent game creators in the gaming industry.

3 investors

DreamRP provides AI-powered tools for creative professionals in entertainment, from independent artists to established studios, prioritizing creator vision over automated content generation.

3 investors

Eggnog develops AI-powered mobile applications for creating animated videos, marketed toward users who want to turn personal memories and shared humor into visual content.

3 investors

Swipehouse operated a social network and matching platform for TikTok creators, helping them connect with each other and find brand deal opportunities. It worked with brands such as Ridge and Hopper and was one of the early companies granted access to the TikTok API.

3 investors

A platform offering interactive science lessons designed for children, featuring content from various instructors.

3 investors

Ankler Media is an independent media company covering the entertainment, media and technology industries. It publishes The Ankler newsletter and platform, delivering news and analysis about Hollywood business and industry transformation for executives, dealmakers and creative professionals.

3 investors

A subscription video platform that helps Black viewers discover and watch content created by and featuring Black creators and performers.

2 investors

Cinapse builds production scheduling software for film and television productions, helping filmmakers and production teams collaborate on schedules, budgets, and timelines.

2 investors

Figments built narrative games, virtual influencers, AI characters, and creative tools over seven years, culminating in Plotdrive, an AI writing engine for long-form storytelling. The company worked at the intersection of emerging technology and creative storytelling.

2 investors

Gigwell provides a vertically integrated SaaS platform for the live entertainment industry, consolidating artist and venue management, offers, contracts, tour logistics, payments, and reporting into a single booking hub. It serves booking agencies, venues, promoters, festivals, and talent buyers across live music, comedy, public speaking, and digital creators.

2 investors

Glade develops AI agents and on-device language models for game developers to generate dynamic game environments, characters, and narratives in real time. The company serves game studios seeking to integrate generative AI into their development workflows.

2 investors