Recraft, the professional AI graphic design generator, today announces £9.4 million ($12 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.

Recraft is the first Generative AI design tool 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.

“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

Recraft builds Foundation Model to advance AI image generation

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 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.

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.

Recraft will advance the use of generative AI for professional design with:

Style control with visual references. This will support the generation of images in a brand style, using brand imagery examples and brand colours.
Sets of images or icons. This new capability enables users to develop sets of branded images or icons. This will support the generation of consistent style graphics. Recraft is the first Generative AI design tool which offers all users the ability to create sets of icons and images.
Graphic designs which combine images and text. This new capability will leverage generative design capabilities to propose the layout, font, colour and illustrations for designs that leverage both imagery and text. This will support the development of designs for digital advertising and marketing, such as social media assets or printed ads.

“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

About Recraft

Recraft is a generative AI platform for professional design. Launched in 2023 by Anna Veronika Dorogush, the creator of CatBoost, one of the most popular machine learning frameworks, the professional design tool creates style consistent images and graphic designs for advertising, marketing and branding. Based in London, Recraft has a team of 13 with deep machine learning experience and expertise fuelling the next generation of AI-powered design. For more information, visit: https://www.recraft.ai/