Mirage (formerly Captions) is an AI video company that offers an all-in-one AI video editor and generator. Its flagship product, Captions, enables creators and businesses to produce polished short-form videos with automated captions, AI avatars, and intelligent editing. Mirage is expanding into AI video foundational model research targeting advertising and marketing industries.
Mirage (formerly Captions) is an AI video company that offers an all-in-one AI video editor and generator. Its flagship product, Captions, enables creators and businesses to produce polished short-form videos with automated captions, AI avatars, and intelligent editing. Mirage is expanding into AI video foundational model research targeting advertising and marketing industries.
Founded in 2021 in New York City by Gaurav Misra and Dwight Churchill, the company launched as Captions — an AI-powered video editing app focused on automated captions and creator tools. Having grown to 20 million users, the company rebranded as Mirage in September 2025 to reflect its expanded mission as an AI research lab building multimodal foundational models for short-form video.
The AI Insider covers Mirage's $75M growth financing and its plans to expand video foundation models and the Mirage Studio marketing platform.
Mirage secured $75 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, bringing total funding to over $175 million. The company plans to push its Captions AI video app into Asian markets and expand its model research.
Mirage's Captions app reached over 20 million users worldwide, with more than 200 million videos created on the platform, cementing its position as a leading AI video creation tool.
Mirage developed and trained a specialized AI model focused on pacing, framing, and attention dynamics specific to short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
The startup formerly known as Captions rebranded to Mirage in September 2025 to reflect its evolution from a creator tool into an AI research lab building multimodal foundational models for short-form video.
Mirage Studio is the enterprise-grade AI video product for brands and ad production teams, enabling at-scale generation of polished video creatives.
Mirage exposes APIs that power bulk video generation and captioning, allowing teams to integrate state-of-the-art video intelligence into their own products and workflows.
Mirage's AI research arm trains audio and video foundation models that underpin its consumer creator and enterprise products, focused on generative video for social and advertising.
Mirage switched the Captions app to a freemium pricing model in January 2025, lowering the barrier to entry to better compete with ByteDance's CapCut and Meta's Edits apps.
Coverage from Slator on Captions reaching a $500M valuation in its $60M Series C funding round.
Co-Founder & CEO
Previously Design Engineering at Snap Inc.
Gaurav Misra is co-founder and CEO of Mirage (formerly Captions). Previously worked in design engineering at Snap Inc. before building Captions into a leading AI video platform.
Co-Founder & COO
Previously Engineer at Klaviyo
Co-founder and COO of Mirage (formerly Captions). Engineering background with prior experience at Goldman Sachs and Klaviyo.
$175M raised total
