MVNT seeks $10 million to build AI tools around choreographers' motion data

MVNT, a Seoul-based dance AI startup co-founded by CEO Joon Jung and choreographer Choi Youngjun, is seeking $10 million in a pre-Series A round, as reported by Business Insider on August 4. The company aims to build AI tools that use choreographers' motion data to train specialized dance models while also creating a system to identify and compensate creators, addressing copyright and royalty issues in the dance industry.

Joon Jung @jooooooooonjung https://x.com/jooooooooonjung?ref=runtimewire and Choi Youngjun https://www.instagram.com/tamzin choi/?ref=runtimewire are seeking $10 million for MVNT, their Seoul-based dance AI business, in a pre-Series A fundraising process that has yet to close, Business Insider reported on August 4 https://www.businessinsider.com/kpop-choreographer-choi-youngjun-ai-dance-mvnt-startup-intellectual-property-2026-8?ref=runtimewire . The founders bring different histories to the pitch. Jung, MVNT's CEO, describes himself as a dancer turned founder and previously worked in technology and crypto, according to Business Insider's reporting https://www.businessinsider.com/kpop-choreographer-choi-youngjun-ai-dance-mvnt-startup-intellectual-property-2026-8?ref=runtimewire . Choi has spent about two decades choreographing for K-pop performers. MVNT's catalogue of his work https://mvnt.world/youngjun-choi/artworks?ref=runtimewire includes BTS's "I Need U," Seventeen's "Falling Flower" and routines for TWICE and Stray Kids. Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/kpop-choreographer-choi-youngjun-ai-dance-mvnt-startup-intellectual-property-2026-8?ref=runtimewire , citing Choi and MVNT, puts his career total above 800 routines. MVNT grew from a problem Choi had encountered throughout that career: choreography can travel across music videos, concerts, social platforms and games without producing continuing income for its creator. Jung and Choi are betting that the same motion data needed to train a specialized dance model can also become the record used to identify and compensate the people whose work feeds it. That alignment is central to MVNT's fundraising case. Generative AI businesses built on creative work face persistent questions about consent, provenance and payment. MVNT wants its training-data operation and creator-rights system to answer those questions together, although its public materials describe the royalty mechanism as a framework rather than a revenue stream already operating at scale. The rights problem came first Jung and Choi met roughly six years ago, when Jung was a dancer in his 20s looking for a way to make choreography a sustainable profession. MVNT began as an intellectual-property and attribution project before its founders expanded the idea into generative AI. "Dancers may have tens of thousands of pieces of choreography out there, but there isn't a system through which they can benefit," Jung told Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/kpop-choreographer-choi-youngjun-ai-dance-mvnt-startup-intellectual-property-2026-8?ref=runtimewire . US copyright rules explain part of the difficulty. The US Copyright Office's guidance on choreography https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ52.pdf?ref=runtimewire says complex choreographic works can qualify for registration, while individual movements, simple routines and social dances generally cannot. That leaves a large amount of commercially valuable movement in a difficult middle ground: recognizable enough to be copied, yet too limited or commonplace to receive protection on its own. Choreographer Kyle Hanagami tested that boundary in litigation against Epic Games over a dance used in Fortnite. The case was ultimately settled. MVNT is taking a technical approach to the same commercial problem by creating portfolios for choreographers, recording motion and attaching attribution to uploaded work. MVNT has also proposed an identification code for choreography in its public dance IP documentation https://docs.mvnt.world/dance-ip/icc-a-universal-identification-code-for-dance-choreographies?ref=runtimewire . Such a registry could create useful records of authorship and contribution even where copyright law offers limited protection. Turning those records into enforceable licensing or dependable payouts will require adoption from creators and the platforms that distribute their work. A product with two markets The current MVNT Studio product https://mvnt.studio/?ref=runtimewire accepts a music link or audio file and generates a dance performed by a digital character. MVNT calls the underlying system "Dance Intelligence," a music-conditioned model designed to respond to rhythm, timing and the structure of a track. MVNT says its motion data was produced with more than 100 professional choreographers using motion capture and a human-in-the-loop process. Choi supplies the creative experience behind that dataset, while Jung is trying to package it for users ranging from meme creators to professional animation teams. That creates two distribution paths. Casual users can generate shareable routines in a browser, following the consumer playbook established by generative music services such as Suno. Developers and studios can use the MVNT API https://mvntinc.mintlify.app/?ref=runtimewire to turn audio into preview videos or BVH and GLB motion files for production workflows. MVNT's current pricing https://mvnt.studio/credits?ref=runtimewire includes a free tier, a Basic plan listed at $9.60 a month when billed annually and a Creator plan at $23.20 a month on the same basis. The paid plans add editing, 3D export and higher API access. Those prices establish a route to revenue, though MVNT has not published revenue, retention or paying-customer figures. Business Insider reported https://www.businessinsider.com/kpop-choreographer-choi-youngjun-ai-dance-mvnt-startup-intellectual-property-2026-8?ref=runtimewire that MVNT has reached 1,100 users and generated more than 2,000 routines. Those figures do not distinguish active users from sign-ups or free users from subscribers. For a product serving both casual creators and production studios, that distinction will determine whether MVNT has found repeatable demand or mainly early experimentation. MVNT also built an AI-assisted music-to-dance suite with Epic Games Korea using Unreal Engine. Epic listed MVNT's Unreal Dance Editor among its 2025 MegaGrant recipients https://www.unrealengine.com/ko/news/epic-megagrants-2025-recap-first-submissions-are-now-open?ref=runtimewire , giving MVNT a foothold in game and virtual-character production. Its API documentation now presents audio-to-motion generation as a production tool rather than a consumer novelty. The $10 million test MVNT launched MVNT Studio in April 2026 https://www.barchart.com/story/news/1158737/mvnt-launches-mvntstudio-bringing-a-software-layer-to-dance-for-the-first-time?ref=runtimewire , nearly two years after closing a $200,000 seed investment led by Mashup Ventures https://kr.linkedin.com/posts/mashupventures 2%EC%B4%88%EC%A7%9C%EB%A6%AC-%EC%B6%A4%EB%8F%84-%EB%8F%88%EC%9D%B4%EB%90%9C%EB%BTS-%EC%95%88%EB%AC%B4%EA%B0%80%EA%B0%80-%EC%B0%A8%EB%A6%B0-%ED%9A%8C%EC%82%AC%EC%97%90-%ED%88%AC%EC%9E%90%ED%95%9C-%EC%9D%B4%EC%9C%A0-%EA%B3%A0%EC%9D%80%EC%9D%B4%EC%9D%98-activity-7198855623017447424-ZcfS?ref=runtimewire . The new fundraising target is 50 times the reported seed check. MVNT has not named a lead investor, valuation or expected closing date. A round of that size would fund a broader bet than a choreography generator. MVNT needs specialized motion data, model development, creator recruitment, rights administration and distribution into game and animation pipelines. Each layer can strengthen the others: more choreographers improve the data, better outputs attract users, and more usage creates opportunities for attribution and payment. Choi's position gives MVNT access that a general-purpose AI lab would struggle to reproduce. His challenge is to convert professional trust into a dataset and commercial system that choreographers see as working for them. Jung's challenge is to prove that dance can support a software business across consumer creation, production tools and licensing. Choi told Business Insider that he views AI as an assistant for choreographers. MVNT's credibility will depend on whether the product preserves that relationship as it grows. The planned royalty system is the part of the pitch that makes MVNT distinct. It is also the part that requires the most proof.