Pulling the right strings in real-time animation
Why we invested in Sans Strings Studio
Most investments don’t start with a pitch deck, they start with people. Exceptional, one-of-a-kind people. Our journey with Sans Strings Studio is exactly one of those stories. In this case, those people just happened to be two real-life puppet masters.
We’re very proud to announce today we’re leading their $5.5m Seed Round, alongside a16z speedrun.
From a founder we already trusted
We’ve known Sébastien for a long time. Long before Sans Strings existed, he was already a proven builder in the creative tools world. He founded Allegorithmic, the company behind Substance, a product that became a global standard for 3D materials and texturing across games, VFX, and design, before being acquired by Adobe in 2019. Substance's impact on the industry was so significant that it earned Sébastien a Scientific and Technical Oscar (yes that’s right!) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
What also stood out to us was the complementary strength of the second founder.
Ryan is the technical force behind the product itself. Ryan has been designing, prototyping, and refining the core systems behind real-time character expressiveness, translating creative intent into a coherent technical architecture, and shaping how the technology actually works
While Sébastien brings decades of experience building category-defining creative technology, Ryan brings something equally rare: a deep, hands-on mastery of real-time character performance. Ryan has been nicknamed as “the puppet guy”, for years, under @DukeGunston on X, where he has been publicly sharing experiments and prototypes of the very technology Sans Strings is now productizing.
So when, back in April, they shared a very early pre-seed deck for the new tech they were working on, we paid attention, even if, at first glance, it was way earlier than what we usually invest in. (for a fund that mostly invest at SeriesA&B stages).
The team was exceptional.
The ambition was clear.
But it was still early.
So we did what we often do in these situations: we said no, for now, and decided to follow very closely.
Then everything accelerated
A few weeks later, the signal got stronger. Not a week went by without Sébastien sharing new commercial discussions: studios, gaming companies, entertainment platforms…
Sans Strings’ pre-seed round was led by a16z Speedrun. From there, everything went fast, we attended the demo day in October and we decided now was the time to go full speed on the analysis to strengthen our conviction.
Not AI replacing artists, but a technology amplifying them
Animation today is pulled between legacy constraints and new AI promises.
On one side, traditional pipelines are slow, expensive, and rigid. Producing high-quality animation still takes months, sometimes years, with budgets that are increasingly hard to justify.
On the other side, generative AI promises speed and automation, but often at the cost of control, consistency, and artistic intent.
Meanwhile, the structural demand for animated content has never been higher and is set to grow significantly through 2030. According to industry forecasts, the global animation market is expected to expand to around $575 billion by 2030, a strong growth trajectory driven by streaming platforms, gaming, advertising, and immersive media. These projections underscore a massive content gap: despite the explosion of platforms commissioning original series and interactive experiences, the global production capacity remains constrained. That gap is where new models of content creation (faster, more flexible and transmedia by design) will win, and where Sans Strings Studio is exceptionally positioned to capture value.
At the core of this tech enabled studio is F.E.L.T., a proprietary real-time “digital puppetry” system that allows artists to perform characters live, with full emotional fidelity and minimal latency. Think of it as bringing the soul of puppetry into the power of modern game engines.
The artist stays in the loop, iteration becomes instant and assets become transmedia, living seamlessly across formats.
A new studio model for a converging industry
What convinced us wasn’t just the technology, it was also the studio vision and the creative intentionality.
Sans Strings is built to operate at the intersection of animation, gaming and live and interactive experiences.
The same characters, performances and worlds can move seamlessly from a game to a series, from short-form content to live shows. This “build once, deploy everywhere” approach fundamentally changes the economics of content creation.
And the traction is already here.
The studio has:
Multiple original IPs in production
A game project ranked among the top 20 most anticipated indie games (see picture below)
A signed contract to produce a mini-series for one of the world’s largest entertainment franchises.
Ongoing discussions with major studios and publishers
For a seed-stage company, this level of creative and commercial validation is very rare.
Simply too good to pass
We don’t often invest at seed.
But sometimes, an opportunity is simply too good to pass.
In Sans Strings, we saw:
Founder-market fit at its peak: Sébastien has already built and scaled category-defining creative technology. Repeat founder we've known for years ? that would be pretty high up our list for sure.
A powerful proprietary tech asset: a production-grade, real-time pipeline that materially changes how animated content is created, faster, more flexible, and designed for transmedia reuse from day one.
A structural market shift: entertainment demand is exploding, while production costs and timelines are under increasing pressure.
Ambition: to build a truly tech-enabled studio that creates, owns, and scales its own original IPs
Looking ahead
We believe the future of entertainment will be real-time, transmedia, artist-driven and Sans Strings Studio is building exactly for that future.
We’re proud to support Sébastien, Ryan and the entire team as they scale this new studio model and we’re excited to help them bridge technology and creativity.
Sometimes, the best stories start with two puppet masters who simply pull the right strings.