EXCLUSIVE: Largo.ai, the AI-driven analytics platform for the film, TV and advertising industries, has secured $7.5M in investment with Sylvester Stallone among the newest backers of the company as it closed its Series A financing round.
Co-led by Los Angeles-based TI Capital and Switzerland and Los Angeles-based QBIT Capital, funding round participants for Largo.ai include Boston’s Atreides Management, former Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard Thomas Tippl and further investment from Swiss private equity firm DAA Capital.
Stallone, who was recently made one of President Donald Trump’s “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, joins Largo.ai as an investor and strategic partner.
According to the company, the $7.5M investment will enable Largo.ai to drive its ambitious growth plans and “enrich its core business areas”. Currently, the company works with more than 600 companies in film and TV, including several Hollywood studios and large agencies. The company plans to expand its core offering with the launch of its Version 3 to market, which will provide actionable recommendations along with existing tools and generate early creative concepts that mimic how content will look in final production stages.
Largo.ai is also planning to expand its recent introduction of Brands Suite, designed for advertising agencies to test campaigns, ideas and products and “expediate the creative process by enabling rapid iteration.” Central to this is what it calls its Simulated Focus Group, an AI version of traditional focus groups and market research tests, which will enable users to discover the impact of their ideas, from predicated emotional responses to likeability and buying interest, with digital twins of real people.
“When we set out on this journey in 2020 for Largo.ai, the role of AI in filmmaking was confined to the streaming giants,” said Largo.ai CEO and Co-Founder Sami Arpa. “Our mission was to level the playing field for the rest of the industry, which has stayed more traditional to date. Over the last two years, as technologies like ChatGPT have become embedded in our everyday lives, the fear of AI has diminished, and its adoption curve is dramatically changing. People have woken up to the limitless potential of using AI as an assistance tool. It’s about creating better content, in a faster, easier and less risky way.”
Launched in 2020 in collaboration with Swiss university Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Largo.ai is headquartered at the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne, an ecosystem for start-ups and companies. The company has a presence in L.A., London and Istanbul and has analysed more than 400,000 films and TV series, 950,000 talents, 59,000 scripts and more than 200,000 ads to train AI programs.
The company won the Best New Start Up award at the San Sebastian Film Festival and was selected as one of the Horizon 2020 Top Start-Ups for Berlinale as well as one of the Top 100 Swiss Start-Up Awards. Its patented core technologies employ a unique approach to understanding content by analysing cinematographic patterns and simulating real human behavior.
Largo.ai will be at this year’s European Film Market, where it will host an event dubbed “Pitch Perfect: Producers Showcase Projects Analysed By AI”. That event will take place on February 15, 2025, at 4.30pm at the Documentation Centre in Berlin.
