Generative AI is transforming the landscape of graphic and art design, and leading the charge is Recraft, an AI graphic design generator. The company recently announced a significant milestone, securing £9.4 million ($12 million) in Series A funding. This investment round was spearheaded by Khosla Ventures and Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub, and saw contributions from RTP Global, Abstract VC, Basis Set Ventures, Elad Gil, and other angel investors.
Recraft distinguishes itself as the inaugural Generative AI tool offering the unique capability to produce and modify vector art, icons, 3D images, and illustrations within specific brand guidelines like colour schemes and icon geometry. This innovation not only enables the creation of branded assets beyond text prompts but also sets Recraft apart in the realm of professional design, where it has garnered over 300,000 users in just eight months since its inception.
Unlike typical generative AI tools that produce raster images, Recraft’s technology encompasses both raster and scalable vector images, catering to a wider spectrum of professional graphic design needs. The new funding will further bolster Recraft’s capabilities, including the development of a novel Foundation Model. This model aims to elevate the generation of style-consistent design elements, sophisticated imagery, and graphic designs. Additionally, Recraft is set to introduce groundbreaking features like the creation of consistent icon and image sets.
The team behind Recraft, led by Anna Veronika Dorogush, creator of the popular machine learning framework CatBoost, boasts profound expertise in machine learning. This team’s unique skills have positioned Recraft to develop its own Foundation Model, a pre-trained, deep learning algorithm, diverging from the reliance on open-source AI platforms.
The upcoming launch of the Foundation Model promises to revolutionize AI-generated imagery, surpassing the limitations of fine-tuning existing platforms like Stable Diffusion. Recraft’s advancements in generative AI for professional design include:
- Style control with visual references, facilitating image generation in a brand’s unique style using examples and colors.
- The ability to create sets of branded images or icons, ensuring stylistic consistency across designs.
- Graphic designs that integrate images and text, leveraging AI for layout, font, color, and illustration suggestions. This feature is particularly suited for digital advertising and marketing designs, like social media content and printed advertisements.
Recraft’s latest developments are not just enhancing the capabilities of generative AI in design but are also setting new benchmarks in the quality and application of AI-generated graphics.
Here is what some of the key people in the funding round had to say:
“I truly believe that AI has the ability to 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.”
— Anna Veronika Dorogush, founder and CEO of Recraft
“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.”
— Nikita Shamgunov, Partner at Khosla Ventures
“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.”
— Nat Friedman
