Cheehoo, an AI Animation Startup Founded by Hollywood and Tech Veterans, Raises $10 Million to Revolutionize Production

Creating animated content is a notoriously complex and time-consuming endeavor. The journey from concept to final scene involves a multitude of specialized steps, each requiring significant effort and expertise. Before a single frame can be rendered, artists meticulously craft storyboards to map out the visual narrative. Then comes the intricate work of modeling characters and environments, followed by rigging them for movement. Lighting a scene to evoke the desired mood and atmosphere is an art form in itself, and finally, rendering turns all this data into viewable images a process that can take hours or even days per frame on powerful computers. Composition brings all these elements together, placing characters and objects within the scene and planning camera movements. This multi-stage pipeline means that even a minor change requested by a director perhaps a different camera angle, a tweak to a character's expression, or an adjustment in lighting necessitates going back through several of these steps, often requiring significant re-work across the team before the scene can be finalized. This iterative process, while essential for creative refinement, adds considerable time and expense to animation production. It is this fundamental challenge within the animation pipeline that a new startup, Cheehoo, aims to address, leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate and simplify the creative workflow. The company recently secured $10 million in funding, signaling strong investor confidence in their approach to tackling the bottlenecks of animation production. You can read more about their funding round and mission here.

The vision for Cheehoo was born out of direct experience within the Hollywood production ecosystem. Specifically, the startup has deep roots in Rideback, the prolific production company known for hits like the Lego Movie franchise, which successfully blended innovative animation techniques with broad commercial appeal. Ridebacks co-CEOs, Michael LoFaso and Jonathan Eirich, are integral members of Cheehoos founding team, alongside Rideback co-founder Dan Lin. Their collective experience running a major animation-involved production company provides Cheehoo with invaluable insight into the real-world challenges faced by studios and creators. Complementing this production pedigree is a formidable technical team, including former president of DreamWorks Animation Chris deFaria, who brings executive leadership and animation studio operational knowledge, and ex-Apple AI researchers Yao-Hung Hubert Tsai and Wei-Cheng Kuo, who provide the deep technical expertise necessary to build sophisticated AI models tailored for creative workflows. This unique blend of Hollywood executive experience, animation production leadership, and cutting-edge AI research forms the core DNA of Cheehoo, positioning them to build tools that are not only technically advanced but also practically relevant to the needs of animators and directors.

In a recent conversation, Cheehoo co-CEO Michael LoFaso articulated the driving philosophy behind the company. "What we found through Rideback is that in Hollywood, the process of creating animation was getting expensive and complex," LoFaso explained. This increasing barrier to entry and iteration was limiting creative freedom and making it harder for creators, particularly those without massive studio backing, to bring their animated visions to life. "It was starting to become tougher for creators to get their idea out in the world. We wanted to create a tool that was native to the workflows of creators and make their lives easier." This focus on workflow integration and user-centric design is central to Cheehoo's strategy. They aren't looking to replace human creativity but rather to augment it, providing tools that streamline the tedious or time-consuming aspects of animation production, thereby freeing up artists and directors to focus on the creative nuances that make animation compelling. The goal is to democratize access to high-quality animation tools and accelerate the pace of creative iteration, allowing for more experimentation and refinement within production timelines that are often tight.

Cheehoos platform is designed to provide creators with a powerful new way to prototype and iterate on animation rapidly. By addressing some of the core technical and logistical hurdles in the pipeline, their tools allow for much faster turnaround times on creative changes. This includes assistance with tasks like data annotation labeling and preparing data for AI models or other pipeline steps which can be a manual and painstaking process. They also help with file conversions and ensuring format consistency across different software packages and stages of production, a common headache in complex animation workflows where assets might pass through multiple programs. By handling these technical chores efficiently, Cheehoo enables creators to move between different steps of the animation process with unprecedented speed and fluidity. Imagine being able to quickly see how a character rig change impacts motion, or how a texture update looks under different lighting conditions, without waiting hours for renders or manual file conversions. This rapid iteration cycle is where Cheehoo aims to deliver significant value, unlocking new levels of creative exploration within production constraints.

A key aspect of Cheehoo's approach is its focus on integrating seamlessly with existing industry-standard tools. Rather than forcing studios and artists to abandon their established pipelines, Cheehoo's workflow is designed to augment them. This includes compatibility with popular 3D animation and game development platforms like Autodesk Maya and Unreal Engine, which are staples in many professional animation and VFX houses. This integration allows users to leverage Cheehoo's capabilities directly within the environments they are already comfortable with. The platform enables users to make changes to animation elements and see the results almost immediately, drastically reducing the feedback loop that traditionally slows down production. Furthermore, Cheehoo understands the importance of creative control. While their platform offers powerful AI-driven features, users have the ability to turn these AI assists on or off, or adjust their influence, allowing artists and directors to maintain ultimate control over the final output. This hybrid approachleveraging AI for efficiency while preserving human oversightis crucial for gaining adoption within a creative industry that values artistic intent above all else.

To power its platform, Cheehoo utilizes a combination of in-house developed AI models and integrations with leading third-party AI providers. Their proprietary models are specifically trained to assist with core animation tasks, such as character and asset creation. This could involve generating variations of character designs, helping with texturing, or even assisting in generating initial character rigs. Beyond their internal capabilities, Cheehoo's platform is designed to be open and extensible, allowing users to integrate models from other cutting-edge AI companies like OpenAI and Runway. This integration with third-party models expands the range of AI-powered features available to users, enabling tasks such as post generation (potentially generating variations of finished scenes or styles), motion stylization (applying different movement styles to characters), and scene composition (assisting with camera placement or object arrangement). By offering this flexible architecture, Cheehoo provides a comprehensive AI toolkit that can adapt to diverse creative needs and leverage the rapid advancements happening across the broader AI landscape.

While Cheehoo did not publicly announce specific launch partners at the time of their funding announcement, the company stated that it is already actively working with several prominent IP holders, animation studios, and independent creators. These early partnerships are crucial for refining the platform based on real-world production feedback and demonstrating its value proposition within professional workflows. The successful development and initial adoption of their technology were clearly compelling to investors, leading to the successful closure of their $10 million funding round. The round was led by Greycroft, a venture capital firm with a strong track record in media and technology investments. Additional participation came from a diverse group of investors including Point72 Ventures, Basis Set, Headline Asia, Powerhouse Capital, Playground Productions, and significantly, Rideback itself, reinforcing the production company's continued belief in the Cheehoo spin-out. This substantial early-stage funding provides Cheehoo with the resources necessary to continue developing their platform, build out their team, and pursue their ambitious goals of transforming the animation production process.

Brentt Baltimore, a principal at Greycroft, commented on the venture firm's decision to lead the investment round. He explained that Greycroft has a long-standing inclination to make investments in companies that are at the forefront of creating "new age" media experiences and production methods. Baltimore expressed confidence in Cheehoo's unique composition, stating that he believes the company possesses the right mix of Hollywood insider knowledge, media industry understanding, and deep technology DNA to effectively identify and solve the complex problems inherent in modern animation pipelines. The combination of creative leadership from Rideback and DreamWorks with the technical prowess of former Apple AI researchers was a key factor in Greycroft's assessment of Cheehoo's potential to execute on its vision. This synergy is seen as critical for building tools that genuinely resonate with the creative community while pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible with AI.

Baltimore elaborated on the potential impact he sees Cheehoo having on the industry. "Cheehoo has an opportunity to reduce the cost of animation production overall," he stated in an interview. This cost reduction is not just about making big studio productions cheaper, but critically, about lowering the barrier to entry for smaller teams and independent artists. "That means it can have sophisticated creators easily create animation films without having an expensive studio setup." By leveraging AI, Cheehoo is attempting to package enterprise-level or big studio-quality workflows and capabilities into a tool that is accessible to a much wider range of creators. This democratization of powerful animation tools could significantly increase the volume and diversity of animated content being produced. "Using AI, the company is trying to put enterprise or big studio-level workflows into a tool enabling independent filmmakers to individuals to be creative with animation features," Baltimore added. Crucially, he also highlighted Cheehoo's commitment to preserving artistic autonomy: "It [is] also doing all this while providing creative control to users, which creatives have always wanted." This emphasis on maintaining control is a critical differentiator in the AI-for-creatives space, addressing common concerns about AI diminishing the role of the artist. Cheehoo's approach suggests that AI can be a powerful co-pilot, enhancing efficiency without dictating creative choices. For more on how Cheehoo aims to tackle these industry challenges, you might find this article insightful: Streamlining the Animation Pipeline: How Cheehoo Aims to Accelerate Creative Production with AI.

Looking ahead, Michael LoFaso outlined Cheehoo's future trajectory. While the company is currently focused primarily on serving enterprises large studios and production houses and prosumers professional independent creators and smaller teams there are plans to expand their reach. LoFaso indicated that Cheehoo intends to roll out more consumer-focused products in the future. This move could potentially open up animation creation to a much broader audience, similar to how user-friendly video editing software has proliferated. This expansion into the consumer market could also position Cheehoo to compete more directly with other startups in the animation technology space. The landscape is already seeing innovation from companies like Accel-backed Cartwheel and Naver-backed Cinamon, which are also building tools aimed at simplifying various aspects of animation production. While Cartwheel and Cinamon may have different approaches or focus areas, Cheehoo's unique blend of Hollywood expertise and deep AI research, combined with significant funding, positions them as a formidable player in the emerging market for AI-powered animation tools. Their success will hinge on their ability to deliver on the promise of making the complex, time-consuming process of animation faster, more accessible, and ultimately, more creatively liberating for everyone from large studios to individual artists.