When Andy McCune came up with the idea for the visual inspiration and discovery platform Cosmos in 2021, it was initially a side project cofounded with Luca Marra to address a personal frustration of not having a central place to save creative works and visual references for their projects.
But once Cosmos was shared with other creatives, it became a hit. As the founder of Unfolded, which was later acquired by Squarespace and a creative himself, McCune laid the groundwork to create the visual inspiration platform and mobile app in 2023. Cosmos publicly launched last summer and was named one of Apple’s 25 apps of 2025 and ranked number one on the App Store in the design category in 28 countries.
“Creatives — designers, art directors, photographers — were saving references across Instagram, screenshots, camera rolls and Pinterest burner accounts,” McCune, chief executive officer of Cosmos, said in an interview with WWD. “Everything was scattered, nothing had context and the tools available didn’t reflect the standards of the people using them. And beyond that, there was a deeper cultural issue — images were circulating everywhere without credit, without context.”
In January, Cosmos completed its Series A funding of $15 million, co-led by Shine Capital and Matrix with participation from Google Ventures, Accel, Plug and Play and Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO of Squarespace. The seed round also raised $6 million from Google Ventures and Accel, for a total of $21 million raised. Angel participation included Casalena, Scott Belsky, Joe Gebbia and Biz Stone.
Andy McCune, cofounder and chief executive officer of Cosmos.
Ethan Daly, general partner at Shine Capital, has also joined the board of Cosmos. Daly said he found the app compelling with McCune’s ability to identify the needs of creatives and “his vision for a platform that inspires and connects creatives, brands and consumers.”
Moreover, the app felt timely to Daly given the “profound deterioration of the visual internet.” He said that Cosmos is catering to the core of traditional social media platforms: creators and curators. And he predicts that consumers will seek out spaces like Cosmos that are rooted in humans.
While the platform was created with creative directors, designers, photographers and stylists in mind, Cosmos has reached beyond that and attracted the attention of millions of users, with more than 10 million saves a month.
“We’re seeing students building mood boards for who they want to become, people redesigning their homes and fashion designers hunting for the seed image of a new collection,” McCune explained. “The common thread isn’t a demographic, it’s a desire. These are people who care deeply about aesthetics and want a space that takes that seriously — both in the platform’s design and the quality of work. They want to express and evolve their personal taste, not just consume content.”
Across the fashion industry, he said that a prevailing problem is that people aren’t getting the full picture of how a collection was created — “runway images are on one site, campaign selects are on Instagram, references in some forgotten Google Slides and behind-the-scenes never sees the light of day.”
The Cosmos mobile app.
Notably, the creative teams from Nike, Chanel, A24, Apple, Adidas, On Running and J.Crew all use Cosmos internally to help organize campaign imagery, references and with archiving collections. And he’s eyeing the likes of Loewe, Dries Van Noten, MoMA and Tadao Ando as potential partners in the future.
While artificial intelligence implementation has become a hot topic cross-industry, Cosmos is being more careful about integration. Moreover, the app doesn’t allow for AI-generated imagery to be saved or viewed.
The AI usage case is specific to researching images saved on Cosmos, including who made it, when it was published, what’s in it and what style it belongs to, to properly label. The same principle is applied to its e-commerce shopping with the detection of the product and relevant link-outs to purchase.
With the recent launch of Cosmos version two, McCune is focused on the collaborative and shareable aspects of the platform. Now users can collaborate on collections together and share on social media. The company is also expanding how brands, creators and institutions use the platform.
“Images move fast, lose their credit, get surrounded by ads and AI slop — you’re scrolling but you’re not actually seeing anything. There’s so much cultural material that’s either scattered across platforms or just disappearing. Visual culture had lost its center. We want Cosmos to be where it lives with context, with permanence and with care,” McCune concluded.
