Generative AI player Leonardo.Ai raises $31M to scale product

Sydney-based startup Leonardo.Ai has recently emerged as a revolutionary force in the realm of generative AI, having successfully secured a whopping $31M funding. Investors such as Blackbird, Side Stage Ventures, Smash Capital, TIRTA Ventures, Gaorong Capital, and Samsung Next have thrown their weight behind this promising venture.

• Founding Story: Leonardo.Ai was established only last year, and the company has already made a significant splash in the AI sector. As of December, it boasted a user base of seven million who have collectively generated over 700 million images.

• Product Features: An enterprise version has been launched by the company, allowing for collaboration tools and private cloud hosting. This version also grants enterprise users access to APIs, facilitating the development of their own tech infrastructure on Leonardo.Ai’s platform with the production API as the starting point.

• Target Market: Leonardo.Ai has carved a niche for itself in creative industries such as gaming, advertising, fashion, and architecture, providing users the ability to save, edit, and build multiple reusable assets in a similar style. Users can also create and train their own models for image generation.

• The Spark: CEO and co-founder J.J. Fiasson's interest in generative AI was sparked by Google Deep Dream. Fiasson's prior experience at gaming studio Raini Studios fueled his passion for generative AI and its potential applications in content creation.

• Shift in Strategy: Originally developed to solely focus on game asset content creation, the team at Leonardo.Ai decided to expand the platform to accommodate a wider range of scenarios. “There’s a lot of different vertical use cases of the platform and we’ve built it in a way, and continue to build it in a way, that supports multiple use cases,” says Fiasson.

One of the key attributes that sets Leonardo.Ai apart from other generative AI art platforms like Adobe Firefly, BlueWillow, and Midjourney is the degree of control it provides to its users. Its unique 'Live Canvas' feature enables users to provide a text prompt and a rudimentary sketch, based on which Leonardo.Ai generates a photorealistic image in real-time.

The recent influx of funding will help Leonardo.Ai to expand its sales, marketing, and engineering teams as the company scales its enterprise product.