Cartwheel is building a generative AI platform for 3D character animation, attacking one of the most expensive and labor-intensive parts of game and film production. Traditional character animation requires either painstaking hand-keyframing by skilled artists or costly motion-capture stages with actors, suits, and cleanup time. Cartwheel collapses that workflow into a text-and-reference interface: a creator describes a movement, supplies optional reference video, and the system synthesizes animation that can be applied to rigged characters and exported into standard tools and engines.
The company was founded in 2023 by Jonathan Jarvis, a founding member of the Google Creative Lab, alongside an OpenAI alumnus serving as chief scientist. The team deliberately recruited animation craft expertise, including former Pixar animators, to ensure outputs meet professional standards rather than producing uncanny or physically implausible motion. This blend of frontier ML research and traditional animation discipline is central to Cartwheel's pitch that AI can augment, not replace, working animators.
Cartwheel emerged from beta in May 2025, releasing its first character animation tools to the public. Its technology is aimed at game developers who need large volumes of NPC and gameplay animation, virtual production teams, and content creators producing animated shorts and social content. By dramatically lowering the cost-per-second of animation, Cartwheel hopes to expand who can tell animated stories at all.
The company has attracted notable backers from both the venture and entertainment worlds, including David Sacks' Craft Ventures and Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo, signaling confidence that generative animation is a durable category rather than a novelty. As real-time engines and AI content pipelines converge, Cartwheel is betting that fast, directable character motion becomes core infrastructure for interactive entertainment.