London-based Wonder Studios is working to broaden its sphere of influence in the global film industry. Its speciality, artificial intelligence filmmaking, is becoming increasingly popular.
This week, the startup pulled together US$12 million in a seed fundraising round led by European venture capital firm Atomico. It builds on a US$3-million-dollar pre-seed round in April that had contributions from figures at OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
“It’s a privilege to back them alongside LocalGlobe, Blackbird and many great industry and technology leaders as they build the studio model for the AI era,” said Atomico Partner Ben Blume.
Wonder will be utilizing the latest funding to increase the size of its engineering team two-fold, expand its American presence and accelerate its output of original content. The creative studio is already pulling in more than US$1 million in revenue per annum.
“Wonder Studios is building a next-generation storytelling platform,” commented Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner at Mercuri, another contributing VC firm. “It is AI-native, creator-led and it offers a reimagined production process, underpinned by proprietary machine learning infrastructure.”
Growth in the AI film industry is being largely driven by 20 to 30 per cent costs savings in VFX and post-production that it can enable. One American research firm, Market.us, has predicted that the AI in film market will expand with compound annual growth in excess of 25 per cent.
This increasing adoption of AI by major industry players has also left many entertainment industry workers concerned about job displacement. Those involved with visual effects, editing and writing roles have become particularly concerned.
Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) (ETR: NFC), Lionsgate Studios Corp (NYSE: LION), Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) (ETR: WDP) and A24 Films have been partnering with AI firms for VFX pipelines and content creation.
Wonder makes popular digital music video
The team at Wonder produced an AI-generated visuals for Lewis Capaldi’s song “Something in the Heavens.” This is one of the studio’s most recent and talked about projects.
It was released in late September and has garnered over 824,000 views. The YouTube video was created in partnership with Google DeepMind and Universal Music Group NV (OTCMKTS: UMGNF) (ETR: 0VD).
More recently, Wonder dropped an 8-minute short space/science fiction AI film titled “The Drift.”
Wonder is currently in the midst of completing an untitled documentary in partnership with Campfire Studios. This flagship project is slated to be released next year. The team is also working on the “Critterz” animated feature, also set to be available for viewing in 2026.
We're proud to announce our $12M Seed round, led by @atomico and backed by world-class investors across entertainment, media, and technology.
Thanks to our continuing partners @localglobevc and @blackbirdvc, and welcome to our new investors.
From @Adobe Ventures and mediatech… pic.twitter.com/gYLBIAle5c
— Wonder Studios (@WonderStudiosX) October 23, 2025
Read more: AI brings Wizard of Oz to life like never before in Las Vegas
Follow Rowan Dunne on LinkedIn
rowan@mugglehead.com
