We believe that this technology will eventually affect all aspects of our economy, just as the power of the internet’s connected communication, in due course, pervaded our collective lives over the course of the past three decades.  However, NextView’s initial Generative AI investing hypothesis has been focused not on the amusement factor of democratizing access to art, music, and text generation for the masses layperson/hobbyists which has captured much of the attention in the popular press and zeitgeist. But rather, we’re enthusiastic about empowering existing creative professionals to do their serious work even better.   

This pursuit of a specific set of professional use-cases for Generative AI led us to Poly, a web-first generative AI company for design assets.  Poly was built to make the current manual process of creating design assets more accessible.  While there are many tools out there that can help professionals ideate and explore new concepts, this service allows designers to actually generate stunning, highly customizable, HD design assets with a single text prompt in seconds.  It gives these creative professionals the power to turn their ideas into reality faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Since the company released its first web-based texture generation tool this past summer, it has attracted thousands of active users ranging from professionals at Fortune 500 companies to individual freelancers in game design, AR/VR, interior design, architecture, e-commerce, and marketing.  The ultimate vision for Poly is to become an online personal asset library, with an “infinite” supply of highly customized design assets matching every designer’s unique style.

But it’s not just the technology that makes Poly stand out – it’s also the team behind it.  CEO Co-Founder Abhay Agarwal is an AI native who possesses both academic and commercial experience in the field.  He is behind a number of visible AI projects, including Beat Sage (an AI for creating Beat Saber maps), Dream Machine (an ambient audio generator), and Lyrical Surgeon (an AI-assisted lyrics-writing tool).  Agarwal’s expertise, along with the commercial horsepower of Co-Founder Sam Young, make Poly well-positioned to iterate towards success in this rapidly-evolving space.  

Today Poly is announcing its recent $4M Seed financing from NextView, Bloomberg Beta, and Felicis.  Notable, given the domain, is the additional participation from Figma Ventures, AI Grant, and other strategic angels, along with Y Combinator.  The way I see it, the promise of Generative AI is not in replacing creative professionals, but instead, in giving them superpowers to create like wizards.  Poly is making a magic wand and we at NextView are excited to be a part of their tale.