AI-powered productivity tool Layer AI has raised a $1.8 million seed round from ad tech, and gaming angels such as Akin Babayigit, Michele Attisani, and Dilpesh Parmar including VC funds from The Games Fund, The Games Syndicate, GFR Fund, Laton Ventures and others.
Founded by a team of passionate professionals with decades of experience in AI, gaming and computer vision, the team believes it can outcompete larger players and expand by staying selective and laser-focused on gaming. They’re focused on bringing value to a wide array of businesses, be it small garage startups or industry behemoths, as it will be integral to their own success.
Layer hopes to demonstrate that every creator has the potential to surpass their imagination and explore new ideas and artistic styles, especially as many AI tools today concentrate on either general use cases and fundamental model training or present standalone features without addressing everyday use cases. Layer believes that a majority of these tools are either overly intricate or not tailored for multi-disciplinary teams and certainly lack enterprise readiness.
Leveraging the AI revolution
CEO Volkan Gurel says, “Just like Web 2.0, Cloud computing or mobile unlocked novel applications that beat incumbents and other startup competitors based on a great product experience, we believe the Al revolution will be no different.
“Al has unlocked many new applications that will be built on top of this new tech stack and we plan to win by building the best product experience for artists in the enterprise leveraging the power of all the great foundational models and tools released by OpenAl, Meta, Stability Al and others. We’re creator-first, enterprise-ready and will remain model-agnostic,” Gurel adds.
According to Layer CRO Burcu Ozcengiz, the tool will continue its dedication to style-consistent output quality and seamless workflow integrations that empower and free artists from redundant workflow overheads. “Al unlocked many opportunities for gaming and we want Layer to be the easiest tool to get on board with and the fastest to ROI.”
While Layer currently concentrates on refining the 2D generation for mobile games and subsequently AAA studios, the team is already planning for the future. In the upcoming stages, Layer aims to generate spine and sprite animations from text, images and other animations, expanding its capabilities to 3D workflows. Also, the platform aims to establish integrations into non-gaming workflows such as marketing and advertising.
The team is now hiring for their founding team positions and you can learn more from its careers website.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
