Recraft, a professional AI graphic design generator, announced €11 million in Series A funding in a round led by Khosla Ventures and former GitHub CEO, Nat Friedman, with participation from RTP Global, Abstract VC, Basis Set Ventures, Elad Gil and other angel investors.
The new funding has enabled this specialist team to join the ranks of a very small number of companies that are developing their own Foundation Model, a pre-trained, deep learning algorithm, rather than using open-source AI platforms, like Stable Diffusion.
Founded in 2022, Recraft is one of the first generative AI design tools that enables users to generate and edit vector art, icons, 3D images and illustrations within a brand’s style controls, such as the colour palette, geometry of icons, and the style of lines. This enables designers to create branded assets without solely relying on text prompts. The company already has over 300,000 users in the eight months since its launch.
Most generative AI tools only generate raster images, which cover a portion of all professional design tasks. Recraft develops both raster and infinitely scalable vector images that support professional applications of graphic designs.
The ability to create professional design quality images and illustrations has set Recraft apart from consumer-targeted tools. The new Series A funding is enabling Recraft to advance its use of machine learning with the development of a new Foundation Model to generate style-consistent design elements, sophisticated imagery and graphic designs, as well as launch industry-first capabilities, including the ability to create sets of icons and images.
Anna Veronika Dorogush, founder and CEO of Recraft, commented: “I truly believe that AI can reshape design and influence the way that we look at the world. Recraft was created to meet the requirements of professional design, generating consistent style images and high-quality vector illustrations suitable for everything from advertising and digital marketing assets to iconography. And the development of our Foundation Model will enable us to improve the quality and consistency of the AI-generated graphic design.”
The team behind Recraft brings extensive machine-learning expertise and experience. Founder, Anna Veronika Dorogush is the creator of CatBoost, one of the most popular machine learning frameworks in the world with hundreds of thousands of weekly downloads. The highly specialist team includes medallists from the International Collegiate Programming Contest and top-ranking Kaggle competitors.
The launch of the Foundational Model will radically improve the quality of the AI-generated imagery developed, as fine-tuning Stable Diffusion ultimately limits the quality of images that can be created.
Nikita Shamgunov, Partner at Khosla Ventures, said: “We are seeing rapid and significant transformation of the design space driven by generative AI. But to date, many of the generative AI design solutions have been targeting consumers, rather than professionals that require high degrees of control. Recraft delivers on professional workflows such as vector images, style controls and end-to-end content production, all powered by in-house built foundation models. Anna Veronika and her team have extensive experience in AI and machine learning and we are excited to lead the company Series A.”
Nat Friedman added: “The Recraft team has a deep level of talent and experience in machine learning, and combined with their unique focus on professional design and vector graphics foundation models, sets them up to play a key role in the future of professional use of generative AI.”
