ZhenFund angel project "Pollo AI" announces $14 million seed round to continue building all-in-one AI video creation platform

On December 4, AI video generation platform Pollo AI officially announced the completion of a $14 million seed round. The round was led by Gaocheng Capital, with ZhenFund participating as a co-investor. This marks Pollo AI's first institutional funding round since its founding. The capital will be primarily directed toward building out its model aggregation platform, upgrading product capabilities, and expanding into global markets — all aimed at accelerating the scaled deployment of its one-stop creation platform.

Yuan Liu, partner at ZhenFund, said: "Abiao has often been called the SEO king, but in my view, their capabilities go far beyond that. Through a long period of quiet preparation, they've honed many foundational skills — SEO just happened to be the first thing people noticed. That they've achieved solid early results in such a fiercely competitive space isn't luck; it's a glimpse of what's to come. For a team with a relatively low-profile background like Pollo to stand on the international stage, I see it as an example of China's underappreciated ecosystem of application-layer entrepreneurs. I believe we'll see more and more such examples, and I trust they'll build products that truly surprise people."

Since its launch in October 2024, Pollo AI has rapidly become one of the fastest-growing AI video generation products. The platform integrates multiple cutting-edge models including Kling AI, Runway, the Veo series, and Stable Diffusion, offering capabilities such as text-to-video, image-to-video, video style transfer, character consistency, AI animation generation, and image generation and transformation — supporting up to 8K output and minute-level video generation. It continues to refine the complete workflow from content generation to editing and enhancement.

In an AI application space that's growing increasingly crowded and homogeneous, Pollo.AI has demonstrated remarkable growth velocity, a clear strategic path, and solid product capabilities. Within seven months of launch, Pollo AI's monthly active users surpassed 4 million. As of December 2025, registered users on the platform exceeded 20 million, monthly actives topped 6 million, annualized revenue crossed $20 million, and the company achieved break-even in May this year.

Pollo AI founder Chenbiao Zhu graduated from Sun Yat-sen University and brings extensive experience in global product growth. During his tenure at Wondershare, he systematically mastered cross-border SEO, content operations, and product internationalization methodologies. As one of China's earliest software companies to target global markets, Wondershare's growth system provided him with a mature framework for marketing and product thinking.

After leaving Wondershare in 2018, he went on to build more than 20 overseas applications, spanning tools, content, and multimedia services — gradually developing independent expertise in user needs analysis, product selection strategy, and growth system construction. Along the way, he evaluated over 500 overseas products, forming a systematic understanding of the decisive role that "timing and direction" play in product success.

In the early days of generative video technology, Zhu敏锐ly identified the window of opportunity around video APIs and open-source models, completing integration and product launch while models were still in beta — securing critical first-mover advantage for Pollo AI. He noted: "When a new technological transformation tears open the old commercial landscape, new opportunities emerge."

As the industry enters a new phase, Pollo AI has gradually evolved from a tool platform focused primarily on model aggregation to an integrated product system centered on the creation workflow. The platform unifies image, video, effects enhancement, and super-resolution capabilities within a single content stream, achieving a closed-loop "generate — edit — re-create" process that significantly boosts productivity for professional creators and enterprise users.

Pollo's core strength lies in not building models, yet understanding better than anyone how to "call" them. Rather than competing with foundation model providers, it uses workflow as its vehicle to integrate the world's most advanced multimodal models, packaging complex technology into a "zero-friction, high-quality, style-consistent" creation experience — gaining a strategic opportunity for "reverse positioning" relative to model vendors.

Zhu said: "If generated images live in one place, video in another, and super-resolution in a third, that's not a product — it's a pile of tools. What Pollo AI aims to build is a workflow, not a toolset."

With competition in the generative video space accelerating, multiple leading companies including OpenAI have successively launched new models and mobile applications. While short-term breakthroughs have drawn attention, Zhu believes that sustainable long-term growth depends on creation workflows, product mindshare, and viable business models — not特效-driven gimmicks or traffic arbitrage.

SEO played a key role in Pollo AI's early growth, but its marginal impact has since declined. He stated that future growth will be determined by product capability and talent structure, not by any single traffic strategy. "What matters most going forward is product refinement, and establishing a distinctive user mindshare."

Following this funding round, Pollo AI will further advance its platform capabilities, continue improving its one-stop creation workflow, and strengthen talent acquisition and R&D investment.

Zhu said the team will complete a new round of product restructuring within three to six months, clarifying Pollo AI's differentiated positioning in the competitive landscape: "I hope Pollo AI can ultimately become the AI-native version of CapCut, or the video-centric Canva."

As the generative video industry shifts from "model competition" to "workflow competition," Pollo AI aims to establish lasting product advantages and user mindshare amid the next wave of structural opportunities.

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