Captions, a startup best known for its AI-driven tools for content creators (such as automated video captioning and editing), has announced a major rebrand to Mirage—a shift that signals its expansion beyond creator-focused products into a new core offering: AI-powered video research and analysis. The rebrand, paired with the launch of its flagship Mirage Research Suite, marks the company’s ambition to serve enterprise clients like market researchers, media firms, and academic institutions, while retaining its existing creator user base.
Founded in 2022, Captions initially gained traction with tools designed to simplify video production for social media creators, influencers, and small businesses. Its signature features—real-time caption generation in 40+ languages, AI-assisted clip editing, and trend-driven content suggestions—attracted over 3 million users, including micro-creators and brands like Sephora and Red Bull. However, the company identified a gap in the enterprise market: while video has become a critical medium for research (e.g., focus groups, customer interviews, and academic studies), analyzing hours of video footage remains manual, time-consuming, and prone to human bias.
The new Mirage Research Suite addresses this pain point by leveraging advanced natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision to turn unstructured video data into actionable insights. For example, the tool can automatically transcribe video interviews, identify key themes (such as customer complaints or positive feedback), track emotional cues (via tone of voice and facial expressions), and generate visual summaries—tasks that would typically take a team of researchers days to complete. Early clients include market research firm Nielsen, which used the suite to analyze 500+ hours of consumer focus group footage in half the usual time, and a university research lab studying public reactions to climate policy.
“Our roots are in empowering creators, but we realized our AI could solve a much bigger problem for enterprises: unlocking value from the mountains of video data they collect but rarely fully analyze,” said Mirage CEO Ryan Zhang. “Rebranding to Mirage reflects our evolution from a niche creator tool to a platform that bridges creativity and research. We’re not leaving our creator community behind—we’re building a product that serves both sides of the video ecosystem.”
To support the expansion, Mirage has raised an undisclosed round of funding led by Accel, with participation from existing investors including Y Combinator and Kleiner Perkins. The capital will be used to hire 25 new engineers and data scientists, refine the Research Suite’s AI models, and launch industry-specific versions (e.g., a healthcare-focused tool for analyzing patient feedback videos and a media-focused tool for tracking audience reactions to TV shows).
For existing Captions users, the transition will be seamless: the creator-focused tools will be rebranded as Mirage Creator Studio and will continue to receive updates, including new features like AI-generated thumbnail suggestions and cross-platform posting. The company says it will also introduce integrations between the Creator Studio and Research Suite—for instance, letting creators use research insights to tailor content to audience preferences, or allowing brands to analyze how their creator partnerships perform via video data.
The rebrand and expansion come at a time of growing demand for AI-driven video analysis. According to a 2025 report from Gartner, 60% of enterprises will invest in video analytics tools by 2027, up from 25% in 2024, as they seek to extract insights from unstructured data (a category that includes video, audio, and images). Mirage aims to differentiate itself from competitors like AWS Transcribe and Zoom’s AI Companion by focusing exclusively on video, combining audio transcription with visual analysis (such as detecting body language or product interactions) in a single platform.
Early feedback from enterprise clients has been positive. “Before Mirage, our team spent 80% of their time transcribing and organizing video data, and 20% on actual analysis,” said a Nielsen senior research manager. “Now, that ratio is flipped—we’re able to focus on interpreting insights rather than managing data. It’s transformed how quickly we can deliver results to clients.”
As Mirage rolls out its Research Suite globally over the next three months, Zhang emphasized that the company’s core mission remains unchanged: “We want to make video more accessible and useful—whether that’s helping a creator make a viral reel or a researcher uncover a breakthrough insight. The rebrand is just the start of that journey.”
For the broader AI and video tech space, Mirage’s pivot highlights a growing trend: startups that initially target consumer or creator markets are expanding into enterprise use cases, leveraging their existing AI expertise to solve more complex business problems. As video continues to dominate both consumer and enterprise communication, Mirage’s dual focus on creators and researchers could position it as a unique player in the evolving AI tools ecosystem.