Typeface, an AI-powered dashboard startup that makes marketing copy and visuals, this week raised $65 million in venture equity funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV (Google Ventures), M12 (a Microsoft venture fund) and Menlo Ventures.
Founded by former Adobe CTO Abiy Parasnis, Typeface Creator attempts to integrate AI with brand tone, audience and workflows to — as Parasnis rather wishfully puts it — reimagine content workflows and enterprise content development.
“We offer a generative AI application that allows businesses to develop personalized content,” Parasnis said. “CEOs, CMOs, heads of digital and VPs, and creative directors are expressing their desire to combine generative AI platforms with high-end content AI to improve the future of content workflows.”
Using Typeface, customers can type in a command like “Write an interesting blog post about apple juice.” The tone and copy of any images can be customized to target specific demographics or align with brand style guidelines.
Certainly, there is a strong interest among enterprises to use generative AI for advertising use cases.
In the past few months, agencies contracted by Heinz, Nestlé, Bacardi-owned Martini & Rossi and Patron have launched ad campaigns using text-to-image images created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Midjourney. Just last week, Coca-Cola struck a deal with OpenAI to develop the company’s text ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 ad copy, images and personalized messaging.
Image Credits: Spelling
There’s a burgeoning industry, in fact, of startup AI startups with marketing- and ad-focused apps. Startups like Movio, Copysmith, Copy.ai, Sellscale, Jasper, Omneky and Regie.ai are using (seemingly) generative AI to create better marketing copy, images and video for ads, websites and emails.
Adoption has been rapid. Statista reports that 87% of current AI adopters are using or considering using AI to improve email marketing. Another report projects that the generative AI market will exceed $110 billion by 2030.
But with ever-increasing competition, beyond early winners like OpenAI, it’s unclear which startups will stand above the rest in terms of market traction. Parasnis asserts that Typeface has a fighting chance, primarily due to the platform’s security and management capabilities, as well as the inclusion of “brand-specific” visual assets.
Security is especially important from a brand’s perspective when it comes to generative AI. Today, even the best article-generating AI is capable of capturing facts and identifying toxic content, content filters, or AI. Image-generating AI, meanwhile, is being trained to copy art elements and photos into the training data without necessarily defining them. Getty Images has sued Generative AI Image Systems for allegedly infringing the intellectual property of other popular creators.
Typeface isn’t the only platform to do this. But will do Have some traction – Parasnis said the company has clients in industries including marketing, advertising, sales, human resources and customer support. One client, Sequoia Benefits Group, is using Typeface to create copy and imagery for its marketing and HR teams.
“We are pleased to see strong early interest and participation from various mid-sized enterprises as we come out of hiding,” continued Parasnis. “This level of customer response highlights the rapid market growth and the unique enterprise-minded vision for micro, private and secure content that is attractive to teams.”
