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Netflix paid $587 million in cash when it purchased Ben Affleck’s AI startup InterPositive, the company disclosed in a federal filing.
As part of the company’s Form 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Netflix confirmed that it completed an acquisition in March “for a total purchase price of approximately $587 million. The disclosure came months after a Bloomberg report indicated Netflix’s March acquisition could amount to up to $600 million for Affleck and InterPositive’s investors, even if the total price for the company was less than that amount.
The remainder would be made up through “certain performance targets,” according to the Bloomberg report. Netflix did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Netflix purchased Affleck’s startup, which he founded in 2022 and operated in stealth mode, in a bid to develop AI tools that kept “filmmakers at the center of the process.” The purchase brought aboard InterPositive’s 16-person team of engineers, researchers and creatives, while Affleck joined Netflix as a senior adviser. The company’s tools allow filmmakers to build an AI model using production dailies to help enhance post-production work such as mixing, relighting shots and adding visual effects, forgoing typical visual generative efforts.
“From the invention of the moving image to the transition to digital, from motion capture to virtual production, technology has evolved alongside the artists who use it,” Affleck said as part of the merger announcement. “Our shared commitment to continuing this legacy makes joining together a natural next step, in addition to Netflix’s decades of experience applying and scaling technology responsibly.”
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos highlighted the company’s integration of generative AI tools and its work with InterPositive during its second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, where it revealed that roughly 300 of its titles have used some form of generative AI this year. Sarandos said that while the InterPositive deal was still in its “early days,” Netflix has seen its impact on productions alongside some of its other in-house tools.
Still, even as he highlighted the use of AI in the docuseries “The American Experiment” to produce sequences “twice as fast and at half the cost of previous options,” he said the company wasn‘t eager to replace human-made work with generative technology.
“We believe it takes great artists to make something great, and AI is not changing that,” Sarandos said. “Movies are being made by people who make movies. AI provides them with better tools to make them even better.”
