Shizuku AI, the startup behind AI VTuber Shizuku, has officially announced new funding from U.S.-based venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The investment highlights growing global investor interest in AI-powered virtual characters within the digital entertainment industry.
Andreessen Horowitz is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading venture capital firms, actively backing early-stage and growth-stage technology companies. Its investment portfolio includes major global tech names such as Meta, X, Airbnb, and Slack. With this latest funding round, Shizuku AI joins a list of tech-driven ventures supported by the Silicon Valley powerhouse.
The announcement came shortly after the launch of Shizuku V2.0 on February 1, which introduced visual upgrades and improved voice quality. Shizuku is an AI VTuber project focused primarily on YouTube streaming. The project had previously paused operations in October 2023 before making a comeback this year with renewed technological advancements.
According to reports from Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the new investment has pushed Shizuku AI’s valuation to approximately $75 million (around 12 billion yen) within just six months of its establishment. This rapid valuation growth reflects the strong market potential of AI-generated characters, particularly as artificial intelligence adoption accelerates across the creative and entertainment sectors.
Shizuku AI was founded by Akio Kodaira, also known as Aki-sensei, an AI researcher with a background in video generation technology. Kodaira previously conducted research at Meta and worked as a researcher at Luma AI. He is also known as one of the contributors behind StreamDiffusion, a technology that gained significant attention within the global AI community and ranked highly on GitHub trends.
Alongside the funding news, Shizuku AI announced the establishment of a new AI laboratory in Japan. The lab will focus on advancing AI character development and digital companions, including enhanced conversational capabilities, multilingual voice synthesis, and cross-platform expansion across Discord, YouTube, and X.
Looking ahead, one of the company’s main challenges lies in overcoming conversational data limitations to make AI interactions more dynamic and proactive. To address this, Shizuku AI plans to build a cross-platform community ecosystem designed to generate continuous feedback and sustainably refine its AI character technology.
