London AI entertainment studio secures seven-figure funding with Sony support

Scriptic, the London based studio developing a dynamic catalogue of interactive phone-first shows and “pioneering” creative applications of generative AI in entertainment, today announces that it has secured an investment from Sony Innovation Fund.

The investment brings the second close of Scriptic’s seed round to $6.2m (approx. £4.9m), following a June investment led by BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Tower 26, the Amazon Alexa Fund, and additional and returning investors, and brings the company’s total seed round to a close at $8.7m (£6.9m).

The investment will be deployed as Scriptic grows its content pipeline of interactive, phone-first shows, and activates its UGC strategy by putting its AI-powered creator tools into the hands of external writers and storytellers.

Antonio Avitabile, managing director-EU of Sony Ventures Corporation, which manages Sony Innovation Fund, commented: “Scriptic is emerging as a front-runner in the future of interactive entertainment, and we are excited to be partnering with the team for the next chapter of their growth journey in an area where we see tremendous opportunity.

“Scriptic’s highly scalable, efficient and sophisticated mobile-first approach pushes the boundaries of interactive content, and we believe the company’s UGC offering has the potential to take this further by empowering the creativity of millions of everyday storytellers.”

(L - R): Nihal Tharoor and Ben Tatham Scriptic co-founders of Scriptic.

Nihal Tharoor, CEO and co-founder of Scriptic, added: “It’s a huge honour to have Sony Innovation Fund join our roster of stellar investors, and we’re thrilled that they share our vision for the future of interactive media and storytelling.”

Nihal Tharoor and Benedict Tatham (chief creative officer) founded Scriptic (formerly ElectricNoir) to create interactive, phone-first shows which simulate the interactive world of smartphones and apps, and reflect people’s digital lives.

By bringing together a creative team from the worlds of TV and gaming, a proprietary tech offering and a host of generative AI technologies, Scriptic has created titles like BAFTA-nominated Scriptic: Crime Stories, now a highly-popular title on Netflix’s gaming offering.

The studio has also developed a range of episodic and short-form titles across different genres hosted on its proprietary app, which has reached over 1.5 million organic installs to-date across Apple and Android.

Scriptic is also one of the first entertainment companies to leverage generative AI tools in a production capacity, having first used ChatGPT and DALL-E in 2021 to help with content production. Since then, they have employed tools like ElevenLabs, ChatGPT, Midjourney and Runway Gen-2 in partnership with human writers, actors and creatives to develop titles.

By Matthew Neville – Senior Correspondent, Bdaily

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