Cheehoo Raises $10 Million to Fast-Forward Animation 

“The best breakthroughs occur when artists are at the heart of innovation” – team Cheehoo

In the entertainment industry where animation can take months and millions of dollars to perfect it, a bold new startup is hitting “fast-forward.” Cheehoo, the Los Angeles-based AI animation company is turning heads across Hollywood and Silicon Valley. 

Founded by former DreamWorks president Chris deFaria and Rideback’s co-CEOs, Michael LoFaso and Jonathan Eirich, Cheehoo is blending artistic magic with advanced AI to slash production times, cut costs, and empower creators like never before.

This startup originated from Rideback, the production company behind the Lego Movie franchise. 

Automating the Art

When talking about the birth of their new startup, the Cheehoo team said “the process relied heavily on cultivating freedom for creative risk-taking and iteration, not dissimilar from ingredients found in startups.”

Cheehoo’s goal is to make animation simpler. Traditionally, animation involves many complicated stages like storyboarding, rendering, and lighting. Cheehoo uses artificial intelligence to make these steps more efficient. This lets creators spend more time being creative and less time dealing with technical details.

Animators no longer need to manually craft every in-between frame or perfect every gesture, Cheehoo’s AI does that in seconds. Its speech-to-animation pipeline takes this a step further: give it a line of dialogue, and it generates matching character animations with synced lips, expressive faces, and natural body language turning voice into motion, effortlessly.

Studios also benefit from its AI-powered previsualization, generating quick scene drafts to experiment with angles and pacing before committing to full production. During the creative process, Cheehoo acts as a real-time co-pilot, offering smart suggestions and corrections. And thanks to its collaborative animation engine, multiple artists can work simultaneously on the same scene while AI ensures everything stays visually cohesive.

From Studio to Creator Economy

Cheehoo’s tools offer seamless integration with platforms like Maya and Unreal Engine, streamlining animator workflows with real-time feedback. Their in-house AI World Model contribute to character and asset development and also support third-party models like OpenAI, Runway  for motion stylization and scene composition.

Recently the animation startup has successfully obtained a funding of $10 million from Greycroft, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Basis Set, Headline Asia, Powerhouse Capital, Playground Productions, and Rideback.

Cheehoo currently targets enterprises and prosumers but intends to broaden its reach to the consumer market. The startup plans to develop more accessible and user-friendly products. This expansion aims to enable independent filmmakers and animation enthusiasts to produce high-quality animations, eliminating the necessity for costly studio setups.

Brentt Baltimore, principal at Greycroft said, “This team has an incredible mix of best in class creatives and technologists. In a short time, they have built a multimodal AI system that gives artists and IP holders full control over their data, storytelling, and workflow.” 

Cheehoo encounters competition from firms such as Accel-supported Cartwheel and Naver-supported Cinamon, both creating platforms aimed at streamlining animation production.

However Cheehoo’s unique blend of Hollywood expertise, technological innovation from the likes of Yao-Hung, Hubert Tsai and Wei-Cheng Kuo is what sets it apart from its competitors.