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Creative Force, which provides AI-powered content governance workflows for large e-commerce retailers and brands, secured $8.9 million in Series A funding from Denmark and Hearst Ventures Export and Investment Fund, at a post-money valuation of $56 million.
The Denmark-based company, founded in 2019, helps retailers and brands create content for marketing campaigns and online merchandising. Its platform enables content production at scale, increasing efficiency by up to 30% so the company can focus on other things, Creative Force co-founder and CEO Thomas Kraglund said in an email interview.
Kraglund explained that unlike other companies that focus on single problem points, Creative Force was developed as an end-to-end solution. It also works with enterprise-level companies where content creation has become too complex – conducting multiple photo shoots, video production, booking models, editorial, post-production and approvals – working with just project management software and spreadsheets. to do.
“The need for content has increased due to social media and faster data connection speeds that enable more rich content,” Kraglund said. “Uniting creativity and operations together on one platform is an interesting interrelationship because creativity is about creating something new that has not been seen before, and operations is the ability to repeat a process over and over again.”
The company initially focused on the fashion and apparel market. However, since its initial round in 2022, the company has seen 170% year-over-year growth in other segments including home improvement, furniture, jewelry, and groceries. As such, Creative Force nearly doubled its development team and created a dedicated AI team, Kraglund said. Additionally, Juliana Weil also recently joined the company as managing director of dreem.ai, the company’s AI incubator.
The concept has taken hold. In the past year, Creative Force has managed more than 10 million digital creative assets, including videos, copy, and photos. It is working with brands including Columbia Sportswear, OTTO, ALDO, David Yurman and Tommy Bahama.
The new investment brings its total funding to $17.9 million and will enable the company to continue integrating generic artificial intelligence into its platform, expand its Denmark headquarters, and establish a new US office in Boston.
In terms of technology development, Creative Force is investing in AI tools for 2D and 3D images and models, product images without the need for another photoshoot and virtual models. Kraglund referred to the second as a “co-pilot” tool that, for example, will write a first draft of a product description that a human copywriter can then quickly review, edit, and finalize.
“We believe AI will be a game-changer in terms of content production at scale, and we are in a unique position to bring generic AI to e-commerce content production,” he said. “Moving into 2024, the primary objective of our sales and other go-to-market teams is to establish Creative Force as the leading content creation platform in the US, as we have done in Europe. “This funding round gives us the resources we need to do this successfully.”
Meanwhile, technology that moves with the flow of work is one reason Hearst Ventures managing director Megumi Ikeda was interested in Creative Force. Ikeda said via email that e-commerce typically hasn’t been a beneficiary of that workflow innovation.
“The Creative Force platform caters to the daily work patterns of its customers,” Ikeda said. “Customers find it intuitive and easy to use. New users can use it immediately. Major third-party software like Capture One and Adobe Photoshop are integrated into Creative Force to create a seamless end-to-end workflow tool. Unlike other competitors in the market, there is no need to wait weeks for software updates to add new modules and optimize the work flow and parties involved.
