Made by people who have waited for light.
Half of us came from sets. Half from labs. We argue about frame rates at lunch. Kinema exists because we got tired of the gap between what a director can describe and what a budget can shoot.
A shot is a decision, not a lottery ticket. The tool should keep the decision and change the pixels. Direction is the job. Rendering is the chore. We build for the second shot, the fortieth, the one you ask for at 11 pm with a note that says “same, but warmer”. Every frame should be real. Every face should stay itself. Every export should say where it came from.
Three years, four models.
Founded in Los Angeles
Three filmmakers and two researchers in a Highland Park garage. First demo: a 2-second dolly that didn't swim.
Kinema-1 · Seed
24 fps interpolated, 8-second shots. 400 beta studios. $9M seed led by Northlight Ventures.
Lisbon · Series A
Research office opens in Lisbon. Kinema-2 Motion ships at 48 fps native. $28M Series A.
Studio · Series B
Studio launches with Versions and re-shoot. 1,900 customers. $64M Series B led by Marrow Capital.
How we work.
Four rules. They show up in code review, in model cards and in what we refuse to ship.
Measure it.
Every claim on this site has a benchmark behind it. If we can’t measure it, we don’t say it.
Keep the decision.
A re-render must respect every choice the director already made. Change one thing, keep the rest.
Consent is a feature.
Real faces need a release. Public figures are blocked. Training data is licensed and opt-in. Non-negotiable.
Ship the note.
Every release gets a changelog entry a producer could read. If it isn’t written down, it didn’t ship.
64 people. Two time zones.
Leadership below. The other 56 are in the credits of every shot.
Los Angeles
Highland Park. Product, Studio, customers. A grading suite on the ground floor that doubles as the review room.
Lisbon
Rua da Prata. Research, render platform, EU data residency. Two blocks from the square in the “Salt Lines” shot.
Six open roles.
Hybrid in either city, or remote within four hours of one. Salary ranges are in every posting. Equity for everyone.
Want to talk?
Press kit, investor relations and partnership enquiries go to one inbox. A human reads it within a day.