It’s never been easier to create and publish art than it is now. If companies building technology around AI seem to be even more efficient, they become even more efficient. That’s especially true in video production. Companies of all sizes use large language models to build tools to exude decent video and animation with several prompts and actions.
Popular tools for the space include Google’s VEO 2, Openai’s Sora, Runway, Luma AI, and Shanghai-based Hailuo. A Korean startup now known as Cinamon is bolstering its efforts to bill some of this burgeoning market. Recently, it raised $8.5 million to continue building animated video generation platform “Cinev.” 2025. Existing supporters Altos Ventures and Saehan Venture Capital have invested in the round.
Cinamon’s pitch is that its platform builds a 3D environment, builds scenes and actions directly, arranges text, edits camera angles, and provides a video generator with text prompts and sliders.
According to CEO Doosun Hong, the company’s approach is essentially different from existing AI video generators, creating videos by using text, images and videos as reference materials to generate pixels. In contrast, Cinev combines a 3D asset library, AI motion generation, and a leading film-making-centered language model to first build a 3D scene with characters and elements, then a suite of video production and editing tools can be edited using
“Our approach allows for easy direction and editing without consistency/physics issues, making it particularly suitable for long format content such as films and dramas,” Hong said. “Cinev is intended to complement existing AI video tools, and it could enable new workflows where Cinev’s output serve as a high-quality reference material for other AI video platforms.”
Cinamon launched Life in 2019 as Cinamon Games, a subsidiary of content production company Vonvon. Cinamon initially set up a JV on Naver Webtoon, a Korean digital storytelling platform, and created an interactive storytelling app. Faced with increasing data privacy concerns, Vonvon merged with Cinamon Games in late 2019 to focus solely on storytelling in the field of social content.
Competitors like Crazy Maple Studio have started offering animated interactive story apps, fiction apps, storytelling apps and short form videos, but Cinamon instead has made animation productions for content creators and studios. We chose to focus on creating 3D animation tools that can speed up and expand. It costs more investment than 2D content tools, but it has a greater scalability potential.
In 2022, the startup began building a 3D animation platform, which subsequently integrated AI capabilities increased production efficiency. That September, Korean gaming companies Krafton, Naver Z (a unit of South Korean internet giant Naver), and Snow (a camera app run by Naver) invested $10 million in Cinamon’s Series A.
Going forward, Cinamon will use investor IPS and 3D assets to enhance its offering. Krafton has substantial intellectual property and 3D assets used in Battleground Games, with Naver Z running the Zepeto Metaverse platform. Cinev helps content creators expand these IPS beyond the game by enabling them to use these IPs, potentially driving Krafton and Naver Z user acquisition It may be.
“Our potential users include comics, manga, webtoon artists, web novel writers, game developers, video creators and traditional animators,” Hong said. “In 2025, we plan to focus on our customers (scope) from individual creators to content IP companies.
Cinamon will employ more AI engineers and use new capital to hire R&D. The startup has a team of 60 staff with expertise in 3D graphics, AI, gaming and content production. The latest funding brings total capital raised to $18.5 million (KRW 25 billion).