Cheehoo, a startup born out of production company Rideback, has raised $10 million in funding to develop an AI-powered tool that promises to revolutionize the animation production process. The company, founded by a mix of Hollywood executives and technologists, aims to make it easier for creatives to produce high-quality animated content by streamlining the complex and time-consuming process of animation creation.

The traditional animation production process involves multiple steps, including storyboarding, rendering, composition, and lighting, making it a costly and labor-intensive endeavor. Cheehoo's AI-powered tool seeks to simplify this process by providing creators with a way to prototype and iterate on animation rapidly, allowing them to make changes and see the results in real-time. The tool integrates with existing platforms like Maya or Unreal, and users can turn AI features on or off to take more control of the editing process.

The founding team behind Cheehoo includes Rideback's co-CEOs, Michael LoFaso and Jonathan Eirich, as well as Rideback co-founder Dan Lin. Other notable founding members include former President of DreamWorks Animation Chris deFaria and ex-Apple AI researchers Hubert Tsai and Wei-Cheng Kuo. According to LoFaso, the idea for Cheehoo was born out of the challenges faced by creators in the animation industry, where the process of bringing an idea to life was becoming increasingly expensive and complex.

"What we found through Rideback is that in Hollywood, the process of creating animation was getting expensive and complex," LoFaso said in an interview with TechCrunch. "It was starting to become tougher for creators to get their idea out in the world. We wanted to create a tool that was native to the workflows of creators and make their lives easier."

Cheehoo's tool uses in-house AI models to assist with character and asset creation, and also allows users to integrate third-party models from OpenAI, Runway, and others for tasks such as post-generation, motion stylization, and scene composition. While the company didn't announce any launch partners, it is already working with several IP holders, studios, and creators.

The $10 million funding round was led by Greycroft, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Basis Set, Headline Asia, Powerhouse Capital, Playground Productions, and Rideback. Brentt Baltimore, principal at Greycroft, believes that Cheehoo has the right mix of Hollywood, media, and technology DNA to solve problems in animation pipelines. "Cheehoo has an opportunity to reduce the cost of animation production overall," Baltimore said. "That means it can have sophisticated creators can easily create animation films without having an expensive studio setup."

Looking ahead, Cheehoo plans to roll out more consumer-focused products, which could help the company compete against startups like Accel-backed Cartwheel and Naver-backed Cinamon, which are also building tools to simplify aspects of animation production. With its AI-powered tool, Cheehoo is poised to revolutionize the animation industry, making it easier for creators to bring their ideas to life.