Electric Sheep raises £393k for AI rotoscoping tool

Electric Sheep, a London-based startup, has raised $500,000 (£393k) in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round.

The company’s cloud-native product, Spotlight, aims to automate background removal, claiming to process one second of footage in less than a minute and outputting an editable layer that allows VFX artists to make key adjustments (known as splines).

Dasein Capital, Spatial Capital and Look AI Ventures led the funding round, with the money to be used to “build and enhance” Spotlight.

Electric Sheep CEO Gary Palmer said: “We are excited to partner with three investors with considerable experience in AI, VFX, and building at scale. Flawless background removal negates the need for onset green screens, empowering creatives to capture the energy of the scene without compromising the final image.”

Steven Sullivan, partner at Spatial Capital and former senior technology officer of LucasFilm, added: “Electric Sheep’s cutting-edge cloud and AI platform is poised to revolutionise several core VFX workflows. They’re taking a smart and pragmatic approach to accelerate some of the most tedious post-production tasks.”