ImagenAI raises $30 million
ImagenAI, a provider of AI-powered editing solutions for professional photographers, today announced a $30 million investment led by global growth investor Summit Partners with participation from existing investor NFX. The financing will support continued investment in strategic hiring and M-and-A, expansion of the company’s SaaS product, and further acceleration of Imagen’s rapid growth, the company said. The investment brings the total investment in Imagen to $35 million, according to Techcrunch.
Imagen was founded in July 2020 to modernize and improve the post-production workflow of professional photographers by intelligently automating image editing at scale, the company said. The initial idea for the business originated from one of the co-founder’s months-long wait for his wedding photos. In speaking with numerous photographers, he uncovered a clear pain point felt across the broader industry: While advancements in digital photography had increased the volume of images captured and stored, post-production work was still largely repetitive and time-consuming, estimated at almost two hours for each hour of shooting time. Because each photographer has their own unique style, the process could not be automated generically with existing tools.
“We built Imagen to make photographers’ lives easier. Our AI-powered solution is designed specifically to automate the tedious aspects of post-production work, allowing each artist to maintain and evolve his or her own creative style,” said Yotam Gil, co-founder and CEO of Imagen. “Imagen essentially creates time for our photographers, allowing them to focus on the artistry of their work and deliver a better experience for their customers.”
Imagen’s end-to-end AI technology creates an individual profile based on a photographer’s previous work and unique creative style. The more photos uploaded, with more diverse scenes and lighting conditions, the better the AI can capture each editing style and accurately predict dozens of editing parameters. Imagen’s solution can save up to 90% of post-production time and turns many hours of manual work into seconds, while preserving the personal style of each user, the company claims. The profile evolves and learns with the user over time, allowing better accuracy and consistency in applying each photographer’s style to new photos ingested into Imagen.
Building on these AI-powered editing capabilities, Imagen plans to continue expanding its SaaS offering, including a near-term launch of a culling product that leverages a user’s AI-generated profile to select the best photos from a photoshoot to streamline the post-production process even further.
Imagen edits more than 150 million photos annually and saves millions of hours of manual work each month for a wide range of customers, from individual photographers to big studios to other creative businesses, the company said.
“We believe Imagen offers a truly innovative, intuitive solution for the professional photography industry with broad applicability to numerous genres across the creator economy where high volumes of digital assets are generated – from events, e-commerce and travel to real estate, sports, food and portraiture,” said Steffan Peyer, a Managing Director with Summit Partners, who has joined the Imagen Board of Directors. “We are excited to partner with this dynamic, smart and visionary team, and we look forward to working together to build upon the strong momentum they’ve established and help bring Imagen’s state-of-the-art technology to new markets.”
Founded in 1984, Summit Partners is a global alternative investment firm that is currently managing more than $35 billion in capital dedicated to growth equity, fixed income and public equity opportunities. Summit has invested in more than 550 companies in technology, healthcare and other growth industries.