Raspberry AI, a generative AI platform for fashion brands, has raised $24 million in series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The investment will enhance product development and boost its client service capabilities, enabling rapid design and development for the fashion industry.
The company’s existing investors Greycroft, Correlation Ventures and MVP Ventures also joined in the round — along with notable angel investors including Gokul Rajaram and Ken Pilot.
Raspberry AI said it will use the round to accelerate its product development and add engineering, sales and marketing talent to its team. The company said Under Armour, MCM Worldwide, Gruppo Teddy and Li & Fung are among its clients.
“The Raspberry AI platform instantly turns designers’ sketches into photorealistic renderings that show in minute detail how products will look, fit and drape in real life,” the company said in a statement. “Common design tasks such as visualizing how a previous bestseller would look in new fabrics traditionally required weeks of waiting for a physical sample to arrive from overseas or numerous hours making changes using traditional photo-editing software.”
The company said with its platform designers can instantly generate “a final rendering of any new fabrication in 10 seconds and then seamlessly generate the assets and technical drawings needed for manufacturing — saving time and cost and enabling limitless design iterations.”
The need for such speed is being driven by changes in shopper behavior.
Cheryl Liu, chief executive officer and founder of Raspberry AI, said over the past five years, “the combination of fleeting social media trend cycles, the on-demand economy, consumers’ insatiable appetite for newness and the rise of fast fashion has fundamentally changed the way consumers shop.”
Liu said, “As a result, brands and manufacturers are being challenged to change the way they design and develop products. We’re excited to partner with these visionary investors to empower fashion creatives ranging from designers to product developers to marketers with next-generation tools that allow them to create and market bestselling products more quickly, efficiently and sustainably.”
Cheryl Liu
Companies are seeking technology solutions aimed at helping them accelerate each stage of the fashion product development cycle “to increase speed to market and profitability while reducing costs,” Raspberry AI said, adding that the company’s end-to-end digital visualization platform “frees brands across tiers from luxury to mass market from having to wait three weeks or more for physical samples and reduces rote design tasks from hours to seconds, so they can focus on creating and iterating products their customers will love.”
Bryan Kim, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said Raspberry AI “supercharges creative teams by leveraging AI at every stage of the design workflow. The comprehensiveness and technical depth of the platform have led to strong customer love and some of the strongest engagement metrics we’ve seen for AI tools. We believe that Raspberry AI will rapidly scale and transform the way creative teams design and develop retail products.”
Andreessen Horowitz describes itself as a versatile venture capital firm that invests in technology-driven companies across various stages — from seed to growth — in fields such as AI, health care, consumer technology, crypto and more. With $44 billion in capital across multiple funds, the firm is led by a team of general partners who are mostly former founders, CEOs, or chief technology officers with expertise in a broad range of tech sectors.
Raspberry AI said its algorithms are trained to specifically understand the nuances of fashion, apparel, footwear and accessories “and recognize industry-specific design and manufacturing terms, making it easy for designers to turn text prompts into lifelike images and for marketing teams to generate visual content for any channel without having to invest in destination photo shoots.”
“Raspberry AI provides powerful tools that fit our unique fashion design needs,” said Mattia Giorgi, head of AI and innovation at Gruppo Teddy. “The solution gives our team the freedom to quickly create, iterate and bring their visions to life through highly realistic renderings that capture even the most subtle design details, helping us translate market insights into designs that excite our customers.”
