Firstman Studio by Hwang Dong-Hyuk, creator of “Squid Game,” has invested $3 million in entertainment-focused AI Tech Company Twelvelabs.
Co-founded by Jae Lee, Soyoung Lee, Dave Chung, SJ Kim and Aiden Lee, Twelvelabs partners with studios, streamers, creators and broadcasters to “enrich video metadata to the scene level, enriched with video metadata to maintain editors and speed.
“Storytelling is becoming more global, visual and faster-paced,” fans said in a statement Thursday. “Adaptable creators can shape the future of entertainment. I think technology like Twelvelabs is now essential to transforming ideas into perfect stories with a speed audience.”
Fans added: “AI tools open up new ways to create film powers that we could never imagine just a few years ago. For me and Firstman Studio, it’s to give filmmakers time to focus solely on art, emotions and magic.”
Twelvelabs distinguishes it from companies that use generator AI to “create whole new content” and emphasizes that it “focuses on enhancing what already exists” in its products.
For each Twelvelabs, “The film and television archives contain billions of dollars of undeveloped footage. Many studios recycle less than 5% of their material, mainly because they are slow to find and prepare for production, manually fragmented. Twelvelabs’ video foundation model allows them to use visually, contextual cues to provide visually, auditory images, and contextual cues, and can provide visually, contextual cues, part of time.”
“Some of the world’s most valuable footage is insufficient because it takes too long to search, search and prepare production,” said the co-founder of Twelvelabs and director of GTM Soyoung Lee. “We make videos instantly searchable and available at scale, allowing media companies, businesses and creators across the industry to unlock more value from every frame they own.”
For information about Bariety’s Q&A with Twelvelabs CEO and co-founder Jae Lee, see below for information about the company’s mission and partnership with fans.
How did Director Fan join the company? What led to your investment?
Director Fan has always been drawn to innovation, whether it’s a way of telling a story or a tool that will help him bring them back to life. When we connected, he was interested in the way that video AI could actually understand the emotional and narrative flow of scenes, not just surface-level cues like objects and dialogue. That deep understanding resonated with him as a filmmaker. When he explored what our technology could do, he saw clear value in creators like him. He is troubled by technical friction and wants to reduce the amount of time he wants to focus on the central part of the story. The integrity of that vision ultimately led him to invest through his production company, Firstman Studio.
What is Twelvelabs’ long-term mission?
At the core, our mission is to index every video in the world and make it as easy to understand as text. Over 90% of data in the world today is video, but most of it remains trapped, including Hollywood archives, sports vaults, and corporate libraries. We want to change that.
By giving the machine the ability to understand not only video but also context: tone, pacing, emotions, etc., it allows humans to focus on what is truly important: creative decisions. Over time, we believe this shift will transform video from passive archives to active, living resources that promote storytelling, discovery, and a whole new kind of experience.
What do you think this technology will benefit creators like fans?
For filmmakers like director fans, time is the least resource. Often times, time often loses daily cataloging, archive shot restoration, or rights validation before the idea moves forward. Twelvelabs’ technology uniquely reduces its friction, surfaces the right scene faster, flags potential issues faster, and clears the paths so that creators can focus more energy on emotions, framing and story arcs.
This goes beyond the creative process. It gives storytellers more time for the magic they can bring – deciding what moves people, what memorable, and what defines the story. For director fans and people like his production company, it means he has less overhead and freedom to focus on doing his best.
What are you doing to quell the fears about creators working with AI-focused companies?
Most of the fear comes from generative AI tools that try to replace human creativity by creating new content on the internet from scratch. That’s not what we do.
Twelvelabs is about working with materials already owned by the creator. Build models of video indexing, searching, and understanding to enable editors, directors and producers to move faster and smarter. Decisions about what to use, how to frame it, what to talk about are still all humans.
