Yahoo News Hollywood Tech Vets Michael and Peter Cioni Raise $1.9M in Pre-Seed Funding to Launch AI Production Tools Startup
Entertainment tech entrepreneurs Michael and Peter Cioni have raised $1.9 million in pre-seed funding to launch their new company Strada, which is aimed at building an AI-enabled cloud platform with tools for production and postproduction.
Announced backers include filmmakers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Rabbit Hole, This Is Us, Crazy, Stupid, Love); Jason Fotter, a co-founder and former CTO of VFX studio FuseFX; and an investment group behind Donut Media, Endcrawl, Goldieblox and principals of Ataboy Studios.
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“We’re starting a new company that is focused on AI technology for workflow,” says CEO Michael Cioni, noting that while generative AI is currently a hot topic, “we believe that AI is going to be equally as valuable and powerful in the [utility] space, which is the workflow space, the tasks that nobody wants to do.”
The plan is to launch a cloud platform with an a la carte subscription “marketplace” of tools for editors, assistants and others who work in production and postproduction, to automate tasks such as transcoding, transcribing, syncing sound, subtitling and dubbing. “So that editors, music supervisors, VFX supervisors can just go right to work … All those tasks today which are traditionally done as a utility- — assistants do them, or even sub-assistants — are going to eventually become automated.”
Michael Cioni emphasizes that Strada isn’t looking to offer tools for editing, color grading or the like, assuming that those pros will continue to use their existing tools for this work. Adds CFO Peter Cioni, “once the entire pipeline lives in the cloud, creatives will have more time to focus on being creative.”
Asked about the impact on other jobs, such as those of assistants, Michael Cioni responds, “Our procure on this is to focus on the creative components of jobs. We want to make sure the creative people are exclusively focused on that and not be bogged down or delayed by non-creative barriers. … We don’t really look at this as a job removal, it takes the existing workforce and get them to be more productive.”
Michael Cioni is the founder of Hollywood post house Light Iron and led tech innovations at Panavision and most recently Adobe through the development of the Frame.io cloud platform. Panavision is supporting Strada as a strategic partner, with CEO Kim Snyder joining the company’s advisory board.
The brothers have been not-so-quietly dropping information about their new business through conversations with industry colleagues and through a YouTube series that they dubbed “Starting a Startup,” which they launched after they resigned from their respective jobs last spring to focus on Strada. Michael left Adobe, while Peter departed from Netflix.
Potential Strada customers are being invited to participate in a public beta test expected to begin next year.
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