Generative AI Startup Typeface, Valued At $1 Billion, Raises $100 Million

4 months after popping out of stealth, Typeface, a platform that helps corporations use their very own proprietary information and generative AI methods to create promotional content material, introduced that it has raised $100 million in a Sequence B spherical at a $1 billion valuation.

The funding spherical was led by Salesforce Ventures with current traders comparable to Lightspeed Enterprise Companions, GV (Google Ventures) and M12 (Microsoft’s Enterprise Fund) taking part and brings the corporate’s whole funding raised to $165 million. The funding comes shortly after Typeface introduced partnerships with Google Cloud and Salesforce to make its AI options accessible to customers in Google Docs, Google Drive and Gmail and in Salesforce’s advertising and marketing chatbot, Advertising GPT.

“We have a look at strategic partnerships as a option to attain the utmost variety of prospects in an aggressive timeline,” founder and CEO Abhay Parasnis informed Forbes.

To make use of Typeface, corporations feed their model’s information, like fonts, product particulars and emblem designs, right into a licensed AI mannequin of their alternative: OpenAI’s GPT-4, Stability AI’s Steady Diffusion 2.0 or Google’s machine studying mannequin Vertex AI, textual content technology mannequin PaLM 2 or picture creation mannequin Imagen. The platform learns from these brand-specific pictures, after which prospects can create customized pictures or textual content comparable to varied iterations of their product’s images, weblog posts, Google adverts and LinkedIn job posts. Typeface didn’t disclose what number of prospects it has however stated that its buyer base ranges from small to giant companies throughout retail, hospitality and journey industries and are situated internationally in nations together with the U.S., Canada, UK and South Korea.

Because it publicly launched in February, Typeface has launched Picture Studio, a function that lets customers use textual prompts to create or edit product images while not having knowledgeable photoshoot or studio. Customers may use AI to transform current video content material like a convention recording or a keynote speech into an electronic mail or a weblog put up.

Parasnis says corporations are utilizing instruments like Typeface to create a “content material manufacturing facility” to provide 10 instances the quantity of content material they beforehand generated to share throughout social media. This type of AI-generated customized advertising and marketing content material may very well be an efficient and low-cost option to goal prospects and take a look at content material methods, says Mike Gualtieri, a principal analyst at Forrester who researches AI for world enterprises.

Nevertheless, as a result of Typeface’s instruments are constructed on fashions like Stability AI’s Steady Diffusion 2.0 and OpenAI’s GPT-4 which can be skilled on public information, they run the danger of making content material that would infringe copyrights or IP legal guidelines, says Gualtieri. Though Typeface incorporates security filters like plagiarism and authenticity checkers, the fashions could create content material much like an current trademarked emblem, he says.

“One of many good issues concerning the widespread experimentation of those AI instruments by shoppers is that now… there’s some expectation that it is not good. So manufacturers can scale back their threat, particularly in the event that they inform prospects that this was AI generated,” Gualtieri says.

That’s one of many the reason why content material created by way of Typace’s platform incorporates metadata that labels the content material as made by AI. For now, Parasnis says prospects might be accountable for their information and resolve which AI fashions they need to work with. With the brand new funding, Typeface plans to scale its crew and develop new merchandise to automate different enterprise capabilities like customer support.

“As thrilling as generative AI is, it may’t be by itself island. It needs to be built-in into current enterprise processes, current cultures and organizations,” Parasnis says.