Netflix bought Ben Affleck's AI startup for $587 million

Netflix paid over half a billion dollars for Ben Affleck's AI startup InterPositive, which he founded in 2022.

According to Variety, Netflix's Form 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that it paid $587 million in cash for an acquisition in March. While the company they acquired goes unnamed in the report, the InterPositive acquisition was announced on March 5, and a Bloomberg report estimated that Netflix could have paid up to $600 million.

According to the March 5 deal announcement, Netflix viewed its acquisition of InterPositive as "investing in creator-led innovation that keeps filmmakers at the center of the process."

In that same announcement, Affleck wrote: "In 2022, I spent a lot of time observing the early rise of AI in production. As a filmmaker, I could see how these models came up short. For artists to apply these tools towards telling the stories we dedicate our lives to, they need to be purpose-built to represent and protect all the qualities that make a great story."

In a video released alongside the acquisition announcement, Affleck emphasized that InterPositive was "not about text prompting or generating something from nothing."

Instead, he explained, InterPositive's tools build a model specific to the film being made, which then gets employed during post-production for processes like mixing and coloring. According to Affleck, this would allow filmmakers to focus on performances in the moment.

As reported by Deadline in April, a 2024 patent application filed by Affleck stated that InterPositive's technology would yield "substantial" savings. It could potentially "replace" costs tied to everything from background artists to splinter film units to reshoots, leading to a "20% reduction in schedule and physical production," as well as a 50% reduction in VFX cost.