Recraft, the startup behind a groundbreaking image model that outperformed OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a prominent industry benchmark last year, has secured a $30 million Series B funding round led by Accel, as exclusively reported by TechCrunch.

Joining Accel in this investment round are Khosla Ventures and Madrona. Headquartered in San Francisco, Recraft had previously raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Khosla in 2024. The startup has recently achieved significant milestones, surpassing $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and acquiring 4 million users.

Recraft gained industry recognition when its “red_panda” model, also known as V3, topped the Artificial Analysis benchmark last year. According to Anna Veronika Dorogush, Recraft’s founder and CEO, the model earned its name due to the frequent generation of images featuring the cute mammal by early users.

Recraft develops its models from scratch, positioning itself as a competitor to other image generators like Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Stable Diffusion, and Black Forest Labs, as noted by Dorogush. However, Recraft’s AI stands out for its exceptional ability to generate images tailored to brands, allowing for precise logo placement and effortless creation of marketing materials that adhere to existing branding guidelines.

Existing image models often struggle in this area, according to Dorogush. As a result, Recraft is drawing closer to competing with design tools like Canva, which also offers an AI generator for branding purposes.

Notably, Recraft is led by a solo female founder and CEO, Anna Veronika Dorogush. Prior to founding Recraft, Dorogush worked on machine learning at Yandex, the Russian equivalent of Google, and held positions at Google and Microsoft.

Before pursuing a career in AI, Dorogush worked as a professional model while earning a degree in mathematics and computer science from one of Russia’s top universities. Although she eventually left the modeling industry, the experience taught her that hard work alone was not sufficient for success.

“The most significant lesson I learned from my modeling days was that grinding is not everything,” Dorogush said. “Now, as I build my company, I understand that excelling in mission-critical areas is crucial. For us, that means building exceptional models, and we’ve dedicated all our efforts to achieving that goal.”