When Netflix acquired Ben Affleck’s mysterious AI firm InterPositive earlier this yr, it took the business by storm.
What was the corporate? What instruments did it create for filmmakers? How would Netflix use them, and use Affleck, who dedicated to work as a senior advisor to the corporate within the deal?
After which there was the query of value. How a lot was the corporate price to the streaming big? Due to a brand new securities submitting, we all know the reply to that last query.
Netflix disclosed in an SEC submitting Friday that it paid $587 million for InterPositive, in money. The disclosure was made within the firm’s type 10-Q, writing that “in March 2026, the Firm accomplished an acquisition which was accounted for as a enterprise mixture for a complete buy value of roughly $587 million, consisting of money consideration.”
Whereas the submitting doesn’t identify InterPositive, Netflix introduced the deal on March 5. The sale value was additionally filed within the firm’s Q1 10-Q, which was filed in Could.
InterPositive was fashioned in 2022 because the multi-hyphenate started to discover the AI area, with a specific emphasis on upending visible results with out impacting the artistic a part of filmmaking, from writing and directing to performing and manufacturing design.
“I knew I had a duty to my friends and our business, to guard the ability of human creativity and the folks behind it. In creating InterPositive, I sought to do exactly that,” Affleck wrote in a publish on the time. “From the invention of the transferring picture to the transition to digital, from movement seize to digital manufacturing, expertise has developed alongside the artists who use it. Our shared dedication to persevering with this legacy makes becoming a member of collectively a pure subsequent step, along with Netflix’s many years of expertise making use of and scaling expertise responsibly.”
The corporate captured a proprietary information set on a closed soundstage, finally resulting in the corporate’s first mannequin, which Affleck wrote was “skilled to know visible logic and editorial consistency, whereas preserving cinematic guidelines underneath real-world manufacturing challenges corresponding to lacking photographs, background replacements or incorrect lighting.”
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned on the corporate’s earnings name this week that about 300 productions at the moment use AI of their course of, largely in post-production.
“Gen AI is scaling shortly throughout all the artistic course of, from idea to pre-vis by publish and supply,” Sarandos mentioned. “We’re making greater high quality output extra shortly and effectively than we may have utilizing conventional strategies. So gen AI workflows now have been utilized in roughly 300 of our titles with the biggest focus proper up to now is on post-production. However we’re leveraging gen AI for actually difficult photographs and sequences.”
The Netflix co-chief cited for example the Tom Hanks-backed doc The American Experiment, which had 17 minutes of what Sarandos known as “AI-enhanced” footage. “It enabled us to increase the scope of the collection in ways in which simply wouldn’t have been possible earlier than. These 17 minutes,” he added, “They have been produced twice as quick and at half the price of earlier choices.”
