Raspberry AI secures 24 million US dollars in funding round

Raspberry AI, the generative AI platform for fashion creatives, has secured 24 million US dollars in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

The company’s existing investors Greycroft, Correlation Ventures and MVP Ventures also joined in the round, along with notable angel investors, including Gokul Rajaram and Ken Pilot.

In a statement, Raspberry AI said the funding would be used to accelerate its product development and add top engineering, sales and marketing talent to its team.

Cheryl Liu, chief executive and founder of Raspberry AI, said: “Over the past five years, the combination of fleeting social media trend cycles, the on-demand economy, consumers’ insatiable appetite for newness and the rise of fast fashion has fundamentally changed the way consumers shop.

“As a result, brands and manufacturers are being challenged to change the way they design and develop products. We’re excited to partner with these visionary investors to empower fashion creatives ranging from designers to product developers to marketers with next-generation tools that allow them to create and market best-selling products more quickly, efficiently and sustainably.”

Raspberry AI to accelerate fashion design with investment led by Andreessen Horowitz

Raspberry AI offers brands and manufacturing creative teams technology solutions, which can help accelerate each stage of the fashion product development cycle to increase speed to market and profitability while reducing costs. The end-to-end digital visualisation platform can turn designers’ sketches into photorealistic renderings in 10 seconds detailing how products will look, fit and drape in real life, and then seamlessly generate the assets and technical drawings needed for manufacturing, “saving time and cost and enabling limitless design iterations”.

In addition, Raspberry AI’s algorithms are also trained to understand the nuances of fashion, apparel, footwear and accessories and recognise industry-specific design and manufacturing terms, making it easy for designers to turn text prompts into lifelike images and for marketing teams to generate visual content for any channel without having to invest in destination photoshoots.

Bryan Kim, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said: “Raspberry AI supercharges creative teams by leveraging AI at every stage of the design workflow. The comprehensiveness and technical depth of the platform have led to strong customer love and some of the strongest engagement metrics we’ve seen for AI tools. “We believe that Raspberry AI will rapidly scale and transform the way creative teams design and develop retail products.”

Currently the technology is being used by Under Armour, MCM Worldwide, Gruppo Teddy and Li & Fung to create and iterate apparel, footwear and accessories styles.

Mattia Giorgi, head of AI and innovation, Gruppo Teddy, added: “Raspberry AI provides powerful tools that fit our unique fashion design needs. The solution gives our team the freedom to quickly create, iterate and bring their visions to life through highly realistic renderings that capture even the most subtle design details, helping us translate market insights into designs that excite our customers.”