Recraft Secures $30 Million in Series B Funding Led by Accel
Recraft, the startup known for its groundbreaking image model that outperformed OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a prominent industry benchmark last year, has announced a successful $30 million Series B funding round led by Accel. The company shared this news exclusively with JS.
Joining Accel in this round are investors Khosla Ventures and Madrona. Recraft, based in San Francisco, had previously raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Khosla in 2024. The startup reports reaching over $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and acquiring 4 million users.
One of Recraft’s breakthrough moments was when its model, known as “red_panda,” claimed the top spot on the Artificial Analysis benchmark last year. This version, dubbed V3, earned its name due to early users consistently generating images of the adorable mammal, according to Recraft’s founder and CEO Anna Veronika Dorogush.
Unlike its competitors such as Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Stable Diffusion, and Black Forest Labs, Recraft prides itself on building its own models from scratch. Dorogush highlighted that Recraft’s AI excels in creating images tailored for brands, allowing for precise logo placement without additional editing and effortlessly generating marketing materials like brochures and posters that align with existing branding guidelines.
According to Dorogush, existing image models often struggle in this area, positioning Recraft as a formidable competitor to design tools like Canva, which also offers an AI generator for branding purposes.
Noteworthy is the fact that Recraft is led by a solo female founder and CEO. Dorogush’s background includes experience in machine learning at Yandex, Google, and Microsoft. Prior to venturing into AI models, she pursued a career as a professional model while completing a math and computer science degree at a top Russian university. Reflecting on her past, Dorogush emphasized the importance of excellence in mission-critical tasks for company success.
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“The biggest lesson from that time was that grinding isn’t everything,” Dorogush said. “Now when building a company, I know that to succeed, we have to be excellent at what’s mission-critical. In our case, building models is very important. So we have put all the effort into excelling at this.”
