London-based Gendo, an AI platform transforming how architects and designers create, has raised £4.3M in a seed round. The funding was co-led by PT1 and LEA Partners, with additional backing from Concept Ventures and Koro Capital. This comes just four months after Gendo’s £855K pre-seed raise.
The new funding will primarily support hiring AI/ML researchers and expanding the product team to manage custom model training and implementation. Gendo also plans to build a commercial team to drive go-to-market strategies and product-led growth.
How Gendo addresses inefficiencies and high costs in traditional image production ?
Founded in 2022 by architectural designer and visualiser George Proud and software engineer Will Jones, Gendo tackles a critical market need — the inefficiencies and high costs associated with traditional image production for architecture.
Speaking to TFN, George Proud, co-founder and CEO of Gendo, explained: “In my previous experience working in architecture practices, the process of getting images and animations made could cost anywhere from a few hundred to £10,000 and take up to two weeks. This was “hugely time-consuming and expensive, ultimately stunting the design process.”
Frustrated by this inefficient workflow, the Gendo founders leveraged AI to make image production more accessible and streamlined for designers. Gendo’s platform can transform 2D drawings, sketches, or text prompts into realistic visualisations in seconds and edit details from scratch based on text inputs.
Flexibility and customisation are at the core of Gendo
Unlike traditional AI image generators, Gendo’s models are designed to be versatile without an inherent architectural style. This allows architects to impart their style into the generated images rather than imposing Gendo’s style on their designs.
Gendo focuses on making its platform seamless and frictionless for architects, tailoring it to their specific needs and workflows. Since emerging from beta in July 2024, Gendo has amassed 3,600 global users and generated over 50,000 images across 5,000 projects. Users can download desired visualisations just 8 minutes after starting a design – over 100x times faster than traditional processes.
Gendo’s growing user base includes leading practices like Zaha Hadid Architects, KPF, and David Chipperfield. However, the company acknowledges biases and limitations in generative AI, particularly around understanding technical architectural terms and generating specific materials or patterns. Proud commented: “To address this concern, we are training additional specialised models to perform more specific architectural functions, such as placing materials, landscaping, and including people in the images.”
Innovative use of AI technology to change architectural visualisation sees traction
Nikolas Samios, Managing Partner at PT1, adds: “What stands out about Gendo – apart from the stellar team – is the fact that they have developed and proven an application that utilises the huge advances in AI for image and video generation that have been made possible by billions of dollars invested in the sector over the past two years. Combined with industry-specific workflows, languages, interfaces, and business models, Gendo perfectly ensures a product-market fit for architectural visualisation.”
Alexi Malikotsinas, LEA Partners, comments: “We believe that every technology shift opens the aperture to new use cases, and Gendo significantly expands what is achievable in this industry. With Gendo, we see immense potential in democratising access to AI-based visualisation for architecture and real estate at large.”
Oliver Kicks, Concept Ventures, comments: “We are thrilled to welcome great new partners to the Gendo journey with LEA and PT1 co-leading this round. These new partners and the Seed round proceeds will help accelerate Gendo’s journey to arm architects and designers with world-class tooling.”
AI will be supportive of architectural design rather than replacing human creativity
AI will support, not replace, human creativity in architectural design. Proud concludes: “The goal is for AI to handle the more tedious and time-consuming tasks, such as image and drawing production, allowing architects to focus more on the creative aspects of their work.”
Gendo’s key focus is continuously improving the product to serve architects better while expanding the platform’s capabilities beyond image generation to support a broader range of architectural workflows and tasks. However, the unfolding of this vision remains to be seen, with the potential for growth and impact in the architectural design industry.
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