ImagenAI, a startup that uses AI to help professional photographers edit photos and automate post-production tasks, today announced it has raised $30M in full equity growth investment from Summit Partners Did. The new capital brings Imagen’s total funding to his $34 million, and co-founder and CEO Yotam Gil tells TechCrunch that he’s expanding software-as-a-service for startups through mergers and acquisitions, as well as product research and development. Said to be used to.
Imagen’s success is due to growing investor bullishness in AI tools for generating and editing artwork, including photorealistic art. Cupixel, which provides AI technology that acquires images to create photographic outlines for painting and painting, recently raised $5 million. Meanwhile, Runway ML, who develops AI-powered creative suites for artists and is a major research contributor to text-to-image AI Stable Diffusion, won his $50 million in early December.
Imagen was co-founded in 2020 by Gil, Ron Oren (former head of R&D at Sinsense), and Yoav Chai (former Mellanox chip designer). This was inspired by Chai’s experience of waiting months for his wedding photos. In speaking with photographers, the co-founder said he saw a big problem in the industry. Post-production is repetitive and time-consuming. Each photographer has their own style, so it’s not always easy to automate the process using existing tools.
The solution they arrived at — Imagen (not to be confused with Google’s Imagen) — aims to learn a photographer’s personal style based on about 3,000 samples of their previous work. Available as a cloud-based plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic, ImagenAI uses machine learning to capture your editing style and attempt to predict dozens of different editing parameters, completing an edit in about half a second ( $0.05 per photo).
ImagenAI user interface within Adobe Lightroom. Image credit: Image AI
Gil explains that Imagen’s editing profile evolves over time, theoretically becoming more personalized as Imagen processes photos in different scenes and lighting conditions. The platform ingests more than 150 million photos annually for “tens of thousands” of customers around the world, he said.
“Imagen profiles evolve with you and learn over time, resulting in greater accuracy and consistency in applying each photographer’s style to new photos brought into Imagen,” said Gil. increase. “Photographers who do extensive editing and spend a lot of time in post-production save time and money while maintaining quality.”
Imagen also offers pre-trained profiles called Talent AI Profiles, based on the unique editorial styles of “leading industry” photographers. Gill claims it’s been tested with a large database of photos to ensure consistent results.
“Before Imagen, photographers either edited by hand or outsourced to an editing service. says Gil. “Imagen democratizes professional photo post-production, making photographic assets available more quickly without the need for multiple professional photo editors to process a brand’s visual he assets.”
Gill said Imagen is now profitable and has annual recurring revenues of over $10 million. In the near future, the company plans to launch a “culling” product that selects the best photos from its photography and local adjustment tools. Identify specific parts of a photo, such as a subject, and apply various editing adjustments.
When asked about his competitors (aside from manual outsourcing, of course), Gil admits that Adobe keeps a number of AI image editing tools within its own products, especially Lightroom. But he insists that nothing is as personalized or customizable as Imagen — at least for now.
Image credit: Image AI
“Imagen’s ability to edit in your own style and tailor edits to each photo based on the characteristics of the photo provides great value to users,” says Gil. “[With Imagen,] Photographers can increase their earning potential by spending more valuable shooting time and less time editing. Efficiency becomes even more important to achieve scale, as inflation and macroeconomic trends impact individual spending on events such as weddings and corporate budgets such as advertising campaigns. “
Steffan K. Peyer, Managing Director of Summit Partners, understandably agrees.
“There are over a million professional photographers out there, and many more avid hobbyists, but many are limited by the sheer burden of manual post-production work associated with each photo shoot. ‘ he said in an email. “With the growth of digital assets and rising expectations for high-quality, high-volume professional images, the Imagen team is building a platform that leverages unique, personalized machine learning techniques that were previously not possible at scale. Did.”
With 50 employees worldwide, Imagen plans to double the size of its workforce next year.