London-based Recraft, a generative AI graphic design startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding to further its mission of bringing advanced generative capabilities to professional creators.
The round was led by Khosla Ventures and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. The investment also saw participation from RTP Global, Abstract VC, Basis Set Ventures, and notable angel investors, including Elad Gil, Zhenya Loginov, Dharmesh Shah, and Akshay Kothari.
Since its founding in 2022 by Anna Veronika Dorogush, Recraft has differentiated itself by being able to generate both raster and vector files. Additionally, it offers superior gradients compared to competition, and handy presets for vector illustrations, raster illustrations, 3D art and icon presets. Within just eight months since launch, the startup has attracted over 300,000 users.
The Series A funding is set to propel Recraft's growth, focusing on broadening its operational, developmental, and business reach. Upcoming enhancements include style control using visual references, creation of branded image sets, and generating graphic designs for digital advertising and marketing. Notably, Recraft is developing its own proprietary foundation model for improved graphic design rather than relying solely on open-source algorithms.
This reflects Dorogush's unique expertise, as the creator of the popular machine learning framework CatBoost—a high-performance open source library for gradient boosting on decision trees. Her technical pedigree has helped Recraft stand out with advanced capabilities.
"I truly believe that AI has the ability to reshape design and influence the way that we look at the world," said Dorogush. "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."
Recraft's specialized foundation model aims to enable new features critical for professional applications such as style-controlled graphical asset generation and creating cohesive sets of icons or images aligned to specific brand guidelines.
The company may soon become one of only a handful developing their own tailored foundation models rather than relying on open-source solutions like Stable Diffusion. This technical advantage has generated significant investor enthusiasm.
"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," said Nikita Shamgunov, Partner at lead investor Khosla Ventures. "Anna Veronika and her team have extensive experience in AI and machine learning and we are excited to lead the company Series A."
With strong traction among professional creatives and new funding to advance its technology, Recraft aims to continue pushing boundaries in applying generative AI to empower graphic design. Expect more creation possibilities as Recraft charts the future of AI-enabled professional creativity.