Flora, the design tool used by designers at Alibaba, Brex, creative agency Pentagram, and entertainment company Lionsgate, has reached a new milestone. The startup announced Tuesday that it has raised $42 million in Series A led by Redpoint Ventures.
Generative AI models can be used in the design process via prompts and other multimodal inputs. Software companies like Adobe, Figma, and Canva are also making AI a core feature of their products. Emerging design startups, on the other hand, believe they need new workflows and different interfaces to be AI-enabled and test the functionality of different models.
To meet these evolving needs, Flora enables customers to create media assets such as images and videos using images, text, and video. Users can also use prompts to make changes and build new nodes in multiple iterations. These generated versions are mapped to each other on the canvas, providing an easy-to-understand creation flow.
Users can then branch from any node to create new versions of the concept or creative they are trying to create. For example, if you want to create a marketing video, you can provide reference images and text prompts to create your concept. You can then add different prompts and create different videos with contrasting styles to see which one is better.
Weber Wong, CEO and founder of Flora, was previously an investor at Menlo Ventures. After that, he participated in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which combines technology and art. The alpha version of Flora was launched in 2024 as part of the course.
The company released a more stable version of the tool last year.
Wong said he realized there was an opportunity to create a new interface to stitch together different models and create an entire workflow on one screen.
tech crunch event
san francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
“What we realized[while building Flora]was that the generative computing paradigm required a new creative interface. If you think about the personal computing paradigm, that’s what Adobe was aiming for: controlling every pixel on the screen to create one piece of media at a time. Now we have a model that allows us to create an entire medium like that. So the natural opportunity to be creative is to step back and be creative. It’s about designing the entire workflow,” he said.
Wong said node-based creation is typically complex, but when combined with AI, designers can quickly explore multiple iterations and ideas. Flora lets you create media and concepts using text, images, and video.
The rise of generative models has made AI-first startups a hot commodity. In October, OpenAI acquired Sequioa-backed Visual Electric, and Figma acquired node-based editor Weavy. Separately, Krea, which has a node-based editor, also raised $83 million in April.
Wong pointed out that the emergence of such tools will lead to an overlap between experts and those using AI, resulting in more people using apps like Flora for design and ideation. Despite the demand, Wong believes user education needs to improve for these tools to become more popular. That’s why the company is collaborating with other organizations to position creatives to better leverage Flora.
Although the startup’s leanings are towards the creative side, the tool is easy enough for business owners and individual users to use. Flora plans start at $16 per month (paid annually) and scale up for agencies and businesses.
Flora plans to use the new funding to expand its enterprise sales capabilities. Additionally, the company wants to put more effort into marketing its products. On the product side, we want to build greater creative control and also add traditional editing features so professionals don’t have to use another tool to complete their projects. The startup currently has 25 employees, but could double or triple that number by the end of the year.
Redpoint Venture’s Alex Bard told TechCrunch that the venture’s team was impressed by the product’s elegant design and how easy it was for anyone to get started.
“What excites us about Flora is that the team has the same commitment as Figma to democratize product design and involve more people in the design process, and that’s because of the way they’ve built the product to make it approachable and collaborative,” Bird said.
He added that in terms of market opportunities, Flora could impact broader creative processes in industries such as fashion, advertising, photography and branding.
Series A includes Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Twitch founder Justin Kan, Frame.io CEO Emery Wells, hanabi Capital GP Mike Volpi, Menlo Ventures, a16z Games, Fal co-founder Gorkem Yurtseven, Burkay Gur, Batuhan Taskaya, Long Journey Ventures, Cyan Banister, and Factorial Capital managing partner Matt. Hartman and MSCHF founder Gabe also attended. Whaley. This latest funding brings the company’s total funding to date to $52 million.
