- Superplastic announced it raised $20 million in funding. These are the details.
Amazon and Superplastic announced a multifaceted collaboration that spans investment and a first-look deal with Amazon Studios, which is currently in development on a series featuring Superplastic’s synthetic celebrities.
The Alexa Fund – which is Amazon’s venture capital arm that focuses on new media, smart consumer electronics, ambient intelligence, and other areas of digital technology – led Superplastic’s $20 million Series A extension investment round. And other investors include Craft Ventures, Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Kering, Sony Japan, Scribble Ventures, Kakao, Animoca Brands, Day One Ventures, and Betaworks. This latest round brings Superplastic’s total funding to $58 million to date, and supports the expansion of the Superplastic character universe.
Additionally The Janky & Guggimon Show, starring the Superplastic synthetic celebrities Janky and Guggimon is in development at Amazon Studios. And the two companies have also signed a first-look deal to facilitate the creation of additional series and films starring other characters in the Superplastic universe.
The Janky & Guggimon Show follows the adventures of two lazy and spectacularly incompetent best friends who are hell-bent on getting rich and famous but leave a trail of chaos and destruction in their wake. And the endearing duo includes Janky, the loveable idiot who spends his spare time scamming celebrities, and Guggimon, a fashion icon and master manipulator who’s too narcissistic to care.
While successful merchandise, gaming, and metaverse activations traditionally follow the success of a popular animated series, this is one of the first times that the sequence has been reversed: Superplastic’s synthetic celebrities Janky and Guggimon built a massive fan base on social media before landing a first-look deal on a major streaming service. And each episode features a cast of animated and human celebrity friends. If ordered to series, then it will be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
KEY QUOTES:
“Superplastic’s universe of synthetic celebrities have earned a cult following in every medium they’ve touched. The new collaboration partnership with Amazon Studios reaches a massive audience and provides a new playground for us to wreak havoc worldwide. We’re grateful for the investment the Amazon Alexa Fund gave us to help us continue to grow the Superplastic Universe!”
— Superplastic founder and CEO Paul Budnitz
“As we expand the Alexa Fund to address a wider range of consumer technologies that include ambient computing, smart devices, and the future of entertainment, we’re very excited to add Superplastic to our portfolio. Superplastic’s virtual celebrities delight audiences and meet their customers where they are, and we see them as demonstrative of a new class of IP that is going to be increasingly relevant with younger generations. We are excited to be an investor and to continue to help Superplastic and Amazon’s Media and Entertainment teams identify more ways to delight customers.”
— Paul Bernard, director of the Alexa Fund
