When I featured Omi as Seed Of The Week in July 2022, the world felt like a very different place. ChatGPT would not be released until the end of the year. In the meantime, Omi had already spent two years developing a promising SaaS platform that allows clients to model and render 3D photos and videos of their brand and products to achieve photo-realistic quality for e-commerce platforms and virtual worlds.
Co-founded by brothers Hugo and Paul Borensztein, Omi had raised a €6 million Seed Round from an impressive list of VCs, Family Offices, and Business Angels. Flashforward two years, and Omi has now raised a €13 million Series A round.
In between, GenAI has changed everything.
The company has been working to integrate GenAI into its virtual 3D modeling tools and now brands itself as "3D generative AI." As part of the funding announcement, Omi officially released three new GenAI-driven products:
- Generative Video: Users can animate their products.
- 3DAI Photo: Transforms existing photos into 3D scenes.
- AI Textures: Generates realistic background textures in seconds.
CEO Hugo said Omi began working on GenAI when it opened an R&D lab in August 2022. While it's taken time to refine the features, he said the initial releases are already gaining big traction with users. He said the ability to create 3D environments and textures was especially complex but proved to be immensely popular. And video has already risen from 5% of usage on the platform to 35%.
Among the strong points, Hugo said Omi has developed a powerful engine for creating realistic light, shadow, and shading in images.
"When we look at AI, the question is can we scale but still maintain quality," he said.
The Borenszteins launched the company in 2022 to allow businesses to
model their products in 3D, and then generate ultra-realistic photo and video visuals photos and videos, with no technical skills required. Omi wanted to help brands refine their ability to create large volumes of high-quality images for e-commerce, marketing, and advertising.
This can be complex enough for brands with existing e-commerce and social spaces, but the rapid growth of new platforms adds another layer of complexity and opportunity. With design resources already stretched thin, Omi aims to simplify these virtual design tasks to make them more efficient and allow more experimentation as brands try to understand how to navigate these new digital terrains.
Omi targets primarily customers with 500 or more employees. The customers use Omi for everything from product pages to banners on social media. What also sets Omi apart, Hugo said, is the ability for users to refine and edit images after they have been generated to achieve exactly the photorealistic look they want.
Over the past 6 months, Omi's growth has accelerated in the UK and across Europe. The latest funding round was led by Dawn Capital, with
Dawn Capital, with the participation of Founders Future and several Business Angels, including Paul Robson, former International President of Adobe. The priority for this new funding is entering the U.S. market, where Omi plans to open an office in the coming months.
"I expect this is going to time and months of testing in the U.S.," he said. "We are not going to figure it out overnight. But I'm going to be personally spending most of my time there and we are determined to find the right pricing and marketing messages to succeed."
