Tailor Brands raises $15.5 million to grow its AI-powered branding platform for non-creatives

Tailor Brands, a company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create company brands, has raised $15.5 million in a series B round of funding led by Pitango Venture Capital Growth Fund and the U.K.’s Armat Group, with participation from Mangrove Capital Partners and Disruptive Technologies.

Founded in 2014, Tailor Brands adopts an ethos similar to that of design marketplaces such as 99designs, insofar as it targets non-designers with a platform that does everything for them. However, Tailor Brands has one key difference: Its designs are carried out by robots. Or, to put it more accurately, algorithms.

The rise of AI

Artificial intelligence was very much the name of the game at Microsoft’s and Google’s respective developer conferences this week, and AI has also been encroaching on the creative realms of late. Google has tools that try to replicate human drawings, Prisma transforms your photos into artwork, Wix offers automated web design, and Automated Insights automatically generates sports and financial coverage for the press.

Against that backdrop, Tailor Brands has been setting out to teach computers how to design logos, write copy, formulate landing pages, and even plan a social media strategy.

After asking just a few questions regarding your company’s name, tagline, and style preferences, Tailor Brands generates a bunch of design options you can include on business cards, websites, letterhead paper, and so on.

Above: Tailor Brands

The company had previously raised around $5 million in funding, and with another $15.5 million in the bank it plans to expand its global footprint, product range, and employee headcount.

So how does Tailor Brands actually train its AI to “design”? Well, the process basically comes down to user-generated input that builds on designs previously fed into the company’s systems.

“When a user chooses a Tailor-designed logo, social post, or business card, the user validates Tailor’s alteration of an initial set of designs,” Tailor Brands CEO and cofounder Yali Saar told VentureBeat. “By doing so, they increase the AI’s level of accuracy for a certain variation. Once enough people validate a variation, Tailor is able to add it to its portfolio. This ‘training’ process enhances the [number] of structures, styles, color variations, and so on.”

So it works much like other neural network systems, by leaning heavily on “supervised” learning via previously validated design data. As it can learn, it should continue to improve over time.

According to Saar, more than 500,000 new businesses use the Tailor Brands platform each month. The company offers two core pricing plans: Dynamic Logo and Premium, which cost around $10 and $50 per month, respectively, when billed monthly. Those who simply want a logo and are not interested in storage, analytics, or other related features could just sign up for one month to get the logo and then cancel their subscription.

The company has offices in New York City and Tel Aviv and said that nearly 4 million businesses used its platform last year, a figure it projects will grow to 12 million in 2018.

“Good branding can be a barrier for small businesses, and we are using AI to solve the issue and democratize creativity,” added Saar. “From logo design to social campaigns, our platform is providing fully automated top-tier creative services to small business owners for a price they can actually afford.”