Michael Lingelbach is the Founder and CEO of Hedra, a pioneering AI video generation platform focused on creating expressive, character-driven content using large-scale foundation models.

Michael was a PhD student at Stanford's Vision and Learning Lab, where he built deep expertise in machine learning and AI before dropping out to launch Hedra in 2023.

Inspired by the gap between avatar tools and video generation platforms, Michael set out to build technology at the intersection of both, enabling long-form dialogue, controllable characters, and immersive storytelling at scale.

Under his leadership, Hedra grew to over 3 million users and an eight-figure ARR within months of launch, attracting backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Abstract Ventures.

Hedra has raised over $42M in total funding, reached a $200M valuation, and launched the Character-3 omnimodal model, the first of its kind in production, powering real-time streaming avatars at 15x lower cost than competing solutions.