In the rapidly changing fashion industry, major retailers launch new styles every quarter, and fast fashion brands like Shein, H&M, and Zara continuously update their product lines. To keep up with the urgent market demand for new designs, brands and manufacturers are seeking technological solutions to accelerate the design process.
Raspberry AI, a startup founded just two years ago, is one such tech solution that aims to help designers quickly visualize and iterate their ideas through its text-to-image platform.
Cheryl Liu, the founder of Raspberry, was previously a private equity analyst focused on retail and later worked at Amazon and DoorDash. At the end of 2022, she noticed the emergence of image models like OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion and realized the opportunity to apply generative AI to fashion design. "For the first time in history, we can rapidly create hundreds of designs in an unprecedented way," Liu said in an interview with TechCrunch. She further explained that designers previously often needed to order physical samples to visualize their ideas, a process that could take weeks.
With Raspberry, designers can transform sketches into realistic images, as if they are already showcased on the brand's website. Liu pointed out that this method allows brands to see different design variations under various materials and prints before deciding whether to produce the products. "No company would order 50 sample iterations for a single product, but now they can see 50 different iterations of the same design."
With its rapidly growing business, Raspberry recently secured $24 million in Series A funding led by the renowned investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors like Greycroft, Correlation Ventures, and MVP Ventures. This funding comes about 10 months after the company completed a $4.5 million seed round.
Andreessen Horowitz partner Bryan Kim stated that their interest in Raspberry stemmed from its ability to accelerate the fashion manufacturing process, and they were excited about Liu's entrepreneurial vision. "We met with multiple companies, and Liu's expertise and her approach to building the company excited us."
Although Raspberry competes with other AI image generators like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Adobe Firefly, Liu noted that professional designers choose her product primarily because of its ability to understand and accurately interpret industry-specific terminology. For instance, for the term "fuzzy sweater," Raspberry can provide a more precise design understanding than Midjourney.
In the future, Raspberry plans to use this funding to recruit talent in engineering, sales, and marketing, and expand into home, furniture, and cosmetics product design.
