Flick seed – Flick, an AI video startup founded by a filmmaker and former Instagram engineer, raised $6 million to help creators produce short films with character consistency.
A creative leap that began in an animated short has turned into a funded venture: Flick has raised $6 million in seed funding to help people make short films with generative AI.
Zoey Zhang. who spent more than a decade pursuing a breakthrough in filmmaking. described how hard it felt to break through without funding or industry connections. especially amid film’s “gatekeepers.” Her pivot came when she made her first film using artificial intelligence—an animated short—assembled with a mix of AI tools.. The project earned a “Best Visual” award at MIT’s 2025 AI Film Hack. which she called a turning point in her career.
Rather than treat the experiment as a one-off. Zhang teamed up with her husband. Ray Wang. a former Instagram engineer. to build a tool that could help her—and others—produce more films using AI.. That effort evolved into Flick, a generative AI video startup that later joined Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch.
Flick’s latest milestone is a $6 million seed round, the report stated. The round was backed by venture firms including True Ventures, GV, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator, along with angel investors.
In presenting Flick to investors, founders leaned heavily on a story that merges technology engineering with filmmaking know-how.. True Ventures partner Mike Montano said the pairing brought together engineering and art. and he pointed to Wang’s background building consumer-facing products at Instagram alongside Zhang’s creativity and understanding of how filmmaking actually works.. Montano also emphasized that seeing Flick’s product demo was crucial to his decision to get on board.
The product itself is built around chat-based prompting and a set of AI models, including Google’s Nano Banana and Veo 3, ByteDance’s Seedance, and Midjourney. Through the platform, users can create a short film using prompts, then refine it without needing to bounce between multiple tools.
Flick is designed to resemble a storyboard workflow.. The interface lets creators move film frames around a canvas. add notes. and create and edit new scenes without opening new tabs. the report stated.. That choice reflects Flick’s stated goal of reducing friction for creators who may be learning AI tools for the first time.
A key feature Flick highlights is preserving character consistency across frames. For narrative filmmaking, that matters because generative systems can otherwise drift characters over time—changing appearance or identity between scenes—making a cohesive story harder to maintain.
Wang said Flick was built to “speak the filmmakers’ language. ” so the story itself can remain the focus instead of constant tinkering with underlying AI tools.. The approach also fits into a broader trend Hollywood has been seeing: a wave of platforms pitching AI as a solution to filmmakers’ problems.
Some competitors have raised significant sums by packaging AI into creator-friendly workflows.. The report cited Moments Lab. which uses raw footage to produce new content faster with AI and raised $24 million in Series B funding last year.. While Flick’s angle centers on generating short films through a storyboard-like interface. the market signal is the same—investors are backing tools that make AI usable for creative production rather than purely experimental.
Flick’s wider ambition is tied to democratizing access to filmmaking.. In theory. lowering the cost and complexity of production could reduce steps such as buying camera equipment. hiring actors. or renting sets.. That framing also connects to a sensitive debate around automation in entertainment: Wang addressed concerns that AI could replace Hollywood jobs by arguing Flick would create more opportunities as more people are able to make films.
The report also described Flick as a five-person company expanding relationships with Hollywood as it grows. It is also considering a move from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, a shift that would place it closer to the industry ecosystem it is trying to serve.
Beyond fundraising and product. Wang positioned the company’s mission around quality and aesthetics—saying Flick wants to show the world it aims to help people create high-quality and aesthetically strong content.. For now. the seed round gives Flick resources to pursue that goal while testing how well its storyboard workflow and character-consistency focus resonate with creators looking to make films faster using AI.
For readers watching how technology investments are reshaping creative industries. Flick’s funding underscores a clear pattern: capital is following teams that can translate both technical capability and production realities into tools that are simple enough to use. yet strong enough to support coherent storytelling.
Flick seed funding AI video startup generative AI filmmaking storyboard interface character consistency Y Combinator Fall 2025 Ray Wang Zoey Zhang