Gendo, an AI platform which transforms how architects and designers bring ideas and sketches to life, has raised a £4.3 million seed round.
This comes less than four months after the company emerged from beta and announced its pre-seed raise of £855k.
The latest round was co-led by PT1 and LEA Partners, with additional backing from Concept Ventures and Helm Capital.
Founded by architectural designer and visualiser George Proud and software engineer Will Jones, Gendo’s image generation platform is able to turn 2D drawings, sketches or text prompts into intricate, realistic ‘visualisations’ in seconds, as well as add and edit details from scratch based on text prompts.
These visualisations are used by designers and architects to win competitive bids and move projects through from ideation to construction, but can be cripplingly expensive and time consuming to create. Users can generate images instantly and tweak them to fit their exact requirements.
Since emerging from beta in July 2024, Gendo has amassed 2,500 global users and seen over 50,000 images generated across 5,000 projects. On average, users are able to download their desired visualisations just 8 minutes after starting a design, which is more than 100x faster than the time it takes to create a visualisation using existing processes.
Gendo’s growing community of users join the ranks of leading practices including Zaha Hadid Architects, KPF, David Chipperfield Architects, and Benoy, who embraced the AI platform during beta.
The team is also today announcing the appointment of Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, as advisor to the company. Schumacher has led the world-renowned firm since Zaha Hadid’s passing in 2016.
“It’s been a whirlwind since we launched the platform and announced our pre-seed funding in July,” said Proud. “Our community of designers and architects has rapidly grown and we’re now proud to have over 2,500 users generating tens of thousands of images.
“We are huge believers in bespoke Generative AI tools that are designed for specific use-cases – the reception to Gendo has been a huge validator of that belief.
“It’s brilliant to welcome PT1, LEA Partners and Helm Capital to the Gendo journey. All have deep sector expertise and immense value to offer. And we are thrilled that Concept has doubled down on their commitment to us and our vision.
“This new tranche of investment will allow us to keep this scaling trajectory going and put Gendo at the heart of how all visualisations are created.”
Schumacher added: “I am excited about Gendo bringing high quality professional AI to architects’ fingertips. The gains in terms of both productivity and creative versatility are a step-change for our discipline.”
Nikolas Samios, managing partner at PT1, said: “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 product-market fit in architectural visualisation. In addition, Gendo already has a natural monetisation strategy that goes beyond the simple and self-explanatory freemium levels.
“As the use of today’s generic AIs creates many IPR issues for larger studios, the offer of enterprise licences is highly appreciated.”