Invoke AI, a developer of open-source generative artificial intelligence (AI) software for artists and creative teams, has raised $3.75 million in a seed fundraising round led by Storm Ventures and joined by SignalFire and Universe Software.
The funds will be used to expand the open-source software project’s community of architects, ad agencies, artists, game designers, graphic and product designers, to build out the technology and bring to market an enterprise SaaS platform for professional creative teams, and to expand a Generative AI ecosystem that provides visual artists and creatives with the most recent AI research.
With 18,900 stars on GitHub, Invoke AI has been one of the fastest-growing open source software repositories since its establishment in 2022. Invoke, by incorporating cutting-edge open-source research, enables professional creatives and enterprises to equip their teams with the latest in Generative AI visual creative tools, streamline their workflow, and complete asset creation in seconds – using their own style, renders, sketches, and more – while maintaining complete ownership of their intellectual property and models.
“It’s been decades since computer automation was introduced to graphic arts and product design, resulting in enormous productivity gains.” Today, AI has the same ability to supplement artists’ and creative professionals’ creative work’, said Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke AI. “We began our project as an open-source tool designed to empower creatives rather than undermine them.” AI must enhance the humanity present in creative work, allowing individuals to focus on realising their vision while limiting the work that technology can aid with.”
Invoke AI, which began as an open-source initiative, provides free access to its Community Edition for anyone to operate locally on their PC. Individuals, teams, and corporations interested in additional features such as single tenant cloud-hosting, model training and administration, collaboration tools, and increased security can also subscribe to Invoke’s premium subscriptions. Invoke AI presently interacts with openly-licensed diffusion models, such as SDXL, which allow artists to opt out of having their works included in training sets, as part of its commitment to co-creation ethics. Users of the technology range from game studios and agencies to architecture businesses, who direct and steer the AI during production using their own designs and intellectual property.