companies
Hedra
San Francisco startup building foundation models for lifelike AI characters and talking-avatar video generation.
Hedra was founded in 2023 by Michael Lingelbach, a former theatre actor who left a Stanford PhD to build the company, and is based in San Francisco. Hedra develops generative-media technology focused on believable digital characters, letting brands and creators turn images, audio and text into lifelike, narrative-driven avatar videos. In May 2025 the company raised a $32 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz's Infrastructure fund at a roughly $200 million valuation, with participation from a16z speedrun, Abstract and Index Ventures, bringing total funding to about $44 million. Its flagship release, Character-3, is described as an omnimodal foundation model for lifelike AI character video, delivered through the web-based Hedra Studio content-creation platform.
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, United States
- Sector
- lab
Tools
- Character-3
Hedra Character 3 turns an image and audio track into a lip-synced talking or singing character video.
- Hedra Studio
Hedra Studio is a web-based visual agent for planning, generating, editing, and collaborating on video, image, and audio work.