Words Don't Work on Toddlers – Animation Does

01 /The Concept

Giant produces animated series for children that, as the startup puts it, "see" your child.

"Seeing the child" means the shows adapt to each child's appearance, name, voice, and interests. The result is significantly deeper engagement – and, with that engagement, more effective learning.

Learning? Yes – because every episode is designed to help children develop social-emotional skills: learning to navigate social situations and to read the emotional states of others through nonverbal cues and tone of voice. New episodes appear on the Giant platform every day.

Children can also chat directly with characters from their favorite shows, since each character has an AI persona capable of talking about anything. That feature has clearly connected – since the platform launched in May last year, children have logged 1 million minutes in those conversations.

But the platform's defining feature is that any child can become the hero of the cartoon. They take a selfie, and the platform transforms them into an animated character – then generates a personalized version of any episode starring that character.

The same applies to drawings. A child sketches a robot, a parent photographs it, and that robot appears as a supporting character in the personalized episode.

Children can do most of this independently, though the app includes a parent dashboard where adults can review a summary of their child's conversations with AI characters – catching anything significant or concerning before it goes unnoticed.

Giant pledges never to run ads in its content and is currently free to use, so the revenue model isn't yet visible. The most likely path is a subscription tier with premium features once the platform has proven its engagement.

Giant launched in May last year, raised an undisclosed seed round in December, and has just closed an $8 million round.

02 /Why It Matters

Giant's founder previously built Apartment List – a rental housing platform – and ran it for 14 years. When he became a parent, he wanted to build something meaningful for his own family, which led him into the entirely new territory of AI video.

And, as the results show, the bet is paying off early. It's a useful reminder of two things: it's never too late to start fresh in an unfamiliar domain, and building something you genuinely need yourself is one of the most reliable paths to building something others need too.

Incidentally, the same instinct drove his earlier company. In 2011, he spent an agonizing 24 hours apartment-hunting in New York, and that experience became Apartment List. The method clearly works.

What doesn't work is manufacturing a problem. Plenty of founders try the same approach but ask themselves the wrong question: "Would I use this if it existed?" – which almost always gets a yes, because they just invented it. A better question is: "Did this problem cost me significant time, money, or frustration?" If it wasn't a real cost, it probably isn't a real problem.

Giant has a close parallel in Pixley ([related review](/review/vasja-masha-i-medved)), a Y Combinator graduate launching under the banner "Opening a New Era of Creative Learning." The concept is similar: parents create animated content to help raise their children. But Pixley has a clear split between ready-made content the platform produces itself and personalized content parents build using their children's characters and drawings – the latter requiring parents to write their own storylines, even with AI assistance.

Giant's advantage is that this division doesn't exist. Children and their drawings can be dropped directly into finished shows, removing the burden of parents having to conceive and write original educational storylines – which is genuinely hard to pull off well.

There's a middle path, demonstrated by Showrunner ([related review](/review/kak-budet-vygljadet-novyj-netfliks-jepohi-ii)) – though aimed at adults rather than children. Showrunner creates "universes" – settings and casts of characters – then lets users generate their own episodes within those worlds, starring existing characters or versions of themselves. One popular universe is "Exit Valley," set in Silicon Valley, where users produce episodes featuring animated versions of well-known tech figures.

As Showrunner's founder told Forbes: "Giving users too much freedom to create anything about anything, then trying to shape that into something coherent, doesn't work." The bottom-up approach, he argues, produces weak stories with nowhere to go. Instead, Showrunner uses a top-down model: the platform establishes the universe, the core narrative arcs, and the principal characters – then opens the floor for user creativity within those constraints.

03 /Opportunities

Raising children is one of humanity's oldest and most persistent challenges – and it's made harder by the fact that trying to shape a child through words and reasoning comes too late.

By age 3, a child's self-concept has formed. By 5, the foundation of character, temperament, and core habits is in place. By 6–7, the primary personality structures are set. After that point, you're no longer parenting – you're attempting to re-parent, which rarely succeeds.

But from birth to age 6–7, the most reliable channel into a child's mind is animation and engaging video content. The mission Giant and Pixley have set for themselves is therefore far more ambitious than it might appear on the surface.

And AI video now makes that mission technically actionable. The technology can produce content with any narrative content and any level of personalization needed to hold a child's deep attention – while embedding the developmental lessons the creator wants to instill.

The remaining challenge is finding the right product formula: one that packages new AI capabilities alongside established child development principles in a way that is simple for parents, genuinely beneficial for children, and engaging enough that children actually want to watch.

Giant, Pixley, and similar startups are taking their first steps. The search space is still wide open – on an enormous and permanent market. What would you try to build here?