Meta engineer invests in Remotion

Remotion, a provider of scalable video production tools, has successfully closed its pre-seed funding round, raising a total of CHF 250,000. An additional investment comes from Christopher Chedeau, a renowned Meta engineer and creator of React Native, positioning Remotion to meet growing demand and expand its market presence.

Based in Zurich, Remotion enables developers to create videos and video applications programmatically using React code. The platform allows users to produce MP4 videos with React components and web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Users can render frames as images with audio support, preview videos in-browser with fast refresh capabilities, and scrub through the timeline for precise editing. The platform also offers the ability to render videos in the cloud, enabling scalable video production.

Jonny Burger, co-founder of Remotion, noted, "I have used various video creation platforms, but none allowed me to create videos based on code. With Remotion, we close this gap. Developers can create any type of video or app for their end users, utilizing our tools to import footage and add interactive elements."

The customer base is diverse; media and publishing companies automate video production and repurpose content, while startups create niche video apps for lyric videos, short-form content, screen recordings, and data visualization. Notable clients include SoundCloud, which produced Year-in-Review videos for the artists on its platform and Submagic, a popular video editor for creating short-form content on social media.

Originally a source-available GitHub project, Remotion transitioned into a company in 2022 with two core team members and now boasts a community of over 4,000 developers who actively share expertise and solve problems on Remotion's Discord server. The Remotion software, available on NPM—a popular package manager in the JavaScript community—is currently installed over 200,000 times monthly. Although these are not unique visitors, co-founder Mehmet Ademi sees this usage as a testament to Remotion’s growing popularity, highlighted by 20’000 GitHub stars.

Industry veteran supports Remotion’s cause
After a declined deal in the Swiss Shark Tank “Höhle der Löwen Schweiz,” Remotion received an offer from Christopher Chedeau, who expressed interest in supporting the startup. In addition to being a renowned engineer at Meta, Christopher is the creator of Excalidraw and co-creator of Prettier and React Native. With his backing, Remotion has finalized its pre-seed round, raising approximately CHF 250,000. He joins earlier investors like gaming innovator Heiko Hubertz, design studio For One Red, and React personalities William Candillon and Sébastien Lorber, alongside engineers from Spotify and Musixmatch.

The capital will help reduce the technical complexity of the product, making it more accessible to a wider range of developers. “Remotion simplifies high-scale video production but remains complex and requires a deep understanding of web technologies. We aim to enhance accessibility by offering user-friendly building blocks, enabling developers to create fully functional video apps in weeks or even days rather than months or years,” explains Mehmet. The company plans to introduce new templates, presets, and components that will help developers bring their video apps to market faster and monetize them more easily.

(RAN)