Leonardo.Ai raises $47 million after broadening its AI image generation for video games

Earlier this week we declared Canva the champion of generative AI in Australia. But there may be a challenger on the horizon, with Leonardo.Ai coming in clutch with a mammoth $47 million raise.

The round saw contributions locally and abroad from Blackbird Ventures, Side Stage Ventures, Smash Capital, TIRTA Ventures, and Gaorong Capital.

The Sydney-based AI startup specialises in hyperrealistic image generation, initially focusing on video games. It has since expanded into other industries such as marketing, fashion and advertising.

The company’s AI, developed from open-source technologies and trained with synthetic and Creative Commons data, offers unique user control compared to other platforms.

The platform also has its own API and allows for saving, editing, and creating consistent style assets. And the applications on offer range from video production storyboards to gaming character mockups.

Users can even develop and train custom models for image generation, with over 400,000 having already been created on the platform. This puts it in league with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which only recently announced the ability for some paid customers to create and sell their own GPTs.

ChatGPT’s functionality was supposed to be launched by the end of the year but has been postponed. There has been speculation around the recent firing and rehiring drama of CEO Sam Altman as the reason for this delay.

Leonardo.Ai also recently launched an iOS app, where users can change the style of uploaded images on the device.

Despite only launching in 2022, Leonardo.Ai has already generated over 700 million images and is clocking around 4.5 million images per day. And at seven million users, it has one of the largest generative AI communities in the world. Sticking with its gaming roots, it also has the third most popular Discord channel globally with 1.8 million members.

Leonardo.Ai also has its eye on the SME sector, recently introducing an enterprise tier with collaboration tools, private cloud hosting, and production API access for tech infrastructure development.

“Leonardo.Ai has enjoyed an unprecedented beginning to its life, from a few thousand users when we first met the team ten months ago to over six million now. Even more impressive has been the speed in which the product has been expanded to serve a wide variety of industries, showcasing their growing ambition,” Niki Scevak, partner at Blackbird, said.

“The most impressive gene of JJ (Fiasson) and the team is the speed in which they have expanded the product. Compounded over a decade, and Leonardo.Ai will have the ability to transform how industries go about their working lives. They’re true wild hearts with huge ambitions, and we’re proud to be able to back them.”

According to Leonarodi.Ai’s CEO and co-founder, JJ Fiasson, the platform’s future strategy will include an increased focus on B2B features. Part of this involved the company migrating to AWS, which the tech giant announced alongside the premier of its Amazon Q enterprise chatbot last week. Prior to this, Leonardo.Ai had to put a cap on its waitlist due to an exponential spike in new users.

This funding round will be used to expand Leonardo.Ai’s sales and marketing teams and to enhance its engineering capabilities as it scales its enterprise product offering.

According to Leonardo.Ai, it is also in the process of creating a copyright shield so commercial clients will have indemnity, much like what Canva released back in October.