Mirage, the maker of the video-editing app Captions, has raised 75 million dollars in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. Over the past year, the startup has undergone significant changes to both its product and corporate identity. It rebranded from Captions to Mirage to position itself as an AI lab that produces different models and also caters to industries like advertising and marketing. The company has trained a model specifically for pacing, framing, and attention dynamics in short videos.
In January 2025, the company switched to a freemium model to better compete with apps like ByteDance’s CapCut and Meta’s Edits. It now offers a video-creation suite as well, with some features from Captions, that lets companies create and distribute videos in bulk.
Mirage’s co-founder and CEO Gaurav Misra stated the company aims to create more models focused on “assembly intelligence,” which involves putting together a video using different sources and components. Speaking about Mirage’s new audio model, which it claims can preserve accents in generated videos, Misra shared a personal example. He noted that many users are international and accents are very important, citing his own father’s experience where his Indian accent was being converted to sound American.
According to data from analytics firm Appfigures, Captions has been downloaded over 3.2 million times in the last 365 days and has brought in 28.4 million dollars in in-app revenue. Misra said the platform has been used to create more than 200 million videos and has attracted an international user base, with only 25 percent of its revenue coming from the United States.
Currently, Mirage’s marketing suite is available on the web, while Captions largely offers a mobile-first editing suite. The company aims to merge these two platforms to better target small businesses looking to create marketing videos.
Pranav Singhvi, managing director of General Catalyst’s CVF fund, said Mirage has great product-market fit. He stated that Mirage’s business equation is extremely figured out, knowing exactly how to spend a dollar and generate a very attractive return on investment. Singhvi described the market as infinite, starting in the creator and influencer world and then using that as a mechanism to sell to enterprises.
While there are many companies building AI video-generation pipelines for marketing, Singhvi expressed confidence in Mirage’s positioning and unit economics. He believes Mirage is clearly ahead of the pack from a unit economics standpoint, which is a reflection of their product.
Mirage aims to use the new capital to fuel growth and expand in high-growth Asian markets.