-Invoke AI, maker of open-source generative artificial intelligence (AI) software built for artists and creative teams, has secured $3.75 million in a seed funding round led by Storm Ventures, with participation by SignalFire and Universe Software.

The funds will be used to expand the support of the open-source software project's community of architects, ad agencies, artists, game designers, graphic and product designers, build out the technology and bring to market an enterprise SaaS platform for professional creative teams, and expand a Generative AI ecosystem that equips visual artists and creatives with the latest in AI research.

Invoke AI has been one of the fastest-growing open source software repositories since its inception in 2022 with 18,900 stars on GitHub. With its incorporation of state-of-the-art open-source research, Invoke empowers professional creatives and enterprises to equip their teams with the latest in Generative AI visual creative tools, streamline their workflow, and complete asset creation in seconds – using their own style, renders, sketches, and more – while maintaining complete ownership of their intellectual property and models.

"It's been decades since computer automation was introduced to graphic arts and product design, bringing tremendous productivity improvements. Today, AI brings the same potential to augment the creative work of artists and creative professionals," said Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke AI. "We started our project as an open-source tool built to empower creatives instead of having this technology undermine them. AI needs to amplify the humanity found in creative work, letting people focus on realizing their vision while reducing the work with which technology can assist."

Originating as an open-source project, Invoke AI gives access to its Community Edition for free to anyone to run locally on their computer. Invoke also offers paid plans for individuals, teams, and enterprises looking for additional functionality like single tenant cloud-hosting, model training & management, collaboration tools, and enhanced security. With a commitment to the ethics of co-creation, Invoke AI currently integrates with openly-licensed diffusion models, like SDXL, which allow artists to opt out of having their works included in the training sets. Users of the tool range from game studios and agencies to architecture firms, who use their own designs and intellectual property to control and guide the AI during creation.