MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Nimble Collective (www.nimblecollective.com), a creative startup led by Academy Award-winning animators and technology entrepreneurs, has closed an $8.5 million round of funding, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). With this investment, Nimble Collective plans to develop a cloud-based, end-to-end platform and online animation community.
The company also announced the appointment of NEA venture partner Greg Papadopoulos to its board, as well as three high profile advisors from the animated film industry, Mark Walsh, Eric Darnell and Peter Ramsey, whose collective credits include directing, writing and animating Rise of the Guardians, Toy Story 2, Madagascar 1, 2 & 3, and Monsters, Inc., among others.
“The animation content market generates $90 billion annually, yet millions of talented animators simply do not have access to the expensive studio-quality technology tools and big budgets currently required to bring high-quality creative projects to fruition,” says Michael Howse, co-founder and investor of Nimble Collective. “Nimble will change that by democratizing the market with the world's first collaborative, cloud-based platform for generating content that animators can distribute and profit from in exciting new ways.”
“Nimble is delivering studio caliber tools and collaboration capabilities -- all in the cloud -- that free-up animators to do what they do best -- create,” adds Nimble co-founder and CCO Rex Grignon. “Our goal is to enable a new generation of creatives to create, collaborate and prosper by building their own unique, modern content to reach huge audiences.”
Nimble Collective is developing a seamless and powerful cloud platform that lets animators more easily collaborate, develop and distribute their creative content. With all production capabilities hosted in a secure cloud environment, animators will spend more time creating instead of worrying about the endless hassles of managing complex, costly infrastructure. Utilizing an “all cloud” service that leverages the latest in high performance cloud-based graphics systems, the company is able to provide a full animation workspace streamed to anywhere an artist chooses to work. The Nimble Collective platform is slated for availability to select partners in the second half of 2016.