Recraft, a San Francisco-based startup, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Accel. This comes after the company secured $12 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures in early 2024. Recraft’s AI image generation model, Recraft V3, has gained attention for outperforming competitors like DALL-E and Midjourney in benchmark tests.
What sets Recraft V3 apart
Recraft V3 is designed to generate high-quality images for brands, allowing for precise logo placement and creation of marketing materials like brochures and posters that meet advertising requirements. The model was built from scratch, competing with other image generation models such as Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Stable Diffusion, and Black Forest Labs.
The company’s CEO, Anna Veronika Dorogush, attributes the model’s success to its ability to understand brand requirements. Before founding Recraft, Dorogush worked in machine learning at Yandex, Google, and Microsoft. She also holds a degree in mathematics and computer science from a top Russian university.
Some key features of Recraft V3 include:
- Precise logo placement
- Creation of marketing materials
- Compliance with advertising requirements
Recraft has seen significant growth, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding $5 million and over 4 million registered users. The company’s success is notable, especially given that it was founded by a woman, making it a rare example of a female-founded AI startup.
The funding round was led by Accel, a prominent venture capital firm. Recraft’s achievement is a testament to the growing demand for AI-powered image generation tools in the marketing and advertising industries.
The company’s AI model, initially code-named “red_panda,” gained popularity after users began generating images of cute red pandas. Dorogush’s background in machine learning and her experience working at top tech companies have contributed to Recraft’s success.
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