Visual AI startup NEX raises $3.5 million seed round led by Foundation Capital

Additionally, NEX can integrate with customers’ data to generate content consistent with their IP. The startup’s tech can also tailor the AI models based on a customer’s existing data, a process called finetuning, or even develop models from scratch. For example, “if you are a film studio that’s been operating for decades and you have access to huge amounts of data,” said Lam. “Then we could effectively build the model from scratch and it would be completely IP safe.”

NEX initially took a consumer-focused approach, attracting nearly 100,000 users within a few months of launching. But the company has since pivoted to targeting business users, selling to small businesses and enterprise customers. The startup now generates revenue by charging up to $50 a month per user for access to its platform and through fees for model development and maintenance.

While models like OpenAI’s Dall-E and consumer-focused Midjourney are popular, many don’t offer the level of control and customization that design professionals require, said Lam. Some customers may seek to develop in-house models on top of open-sourced ones but it ends up being very expensive, he added.

Setting up and onboarding machine learning engineers, GPUs, and infrastructure is very difficult and costly. “It’s much easier to work with a provider like NEX that not only is building the models but can integrate the models directly with applications that their creative teams can use.”

Other visual AI companies include BRIA, which raised a $24 million Series A in March and targets enterprise users, and Cuebric, an early-stage company focused on the film production process.

Lam leads a small team of four employees at the young startup. Before founding the company, he was the head of product for computer vision at Cerebras Systems, which develops AI chips and confidentially filed for an IPO earlier this year. While companies like Adobe and Autodesk thrived in the internet age, Lam expects AI to completely upend the software landscape for creative tasks. This transformation will extend to areas like 3D design for game development, product design for software development, and visual creation for entertainment. Lam’s vision for NEX is to be the “visual media tool for the AI era.”