Visionaries Club’s Post

✨ The next wave of visual intelligence won’t be built by the biggest teams. It’ll be built by the those who already changed the game once, and know how to do it again. Before the world realised what diffusion models could unlock, a small team of researchers in Europe quietly rewrote the rules of image generation: pioneering Latent Diffusion to make visual AI powerful, Stable Diffusion to make AI accessible, and FLUX models to make AI controllable. Those same minds are now building what comes after… and they’re doing it in Europe. Today, we’re proud to back Black Forest Labs as part of their $300M Series B, joining an extraordinary group of partners to support one of the most advanced independent AI research labs on the planet. Why we believe this matters: - 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 & 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: over 400M+ downloads of their open models, used by millions of developers and creators - A 𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘆, 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 (~50) rivalling Big Tech results - 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲, with customers from Adobe to Meta and Canva - A blueprint for 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱-𝗰𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀, 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 Visual AI is shifting from beautiful outputs to systems that understand creative intent — unifying perception, generation, memory, and reasoning. That is the infrastructure BFL is building, and we believe it will shape how the world designs, builds, and imagines. This new round unlocks the next chapter of research, infrastructure, and talent, including the work behind 𝗙𝗹𝘂𝘅 𝟮, their next-generation model family. We’re so proud to partner with Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann and the BFL team on the road ahead. From the Black Forest to the rest of the world. Europe can and is competing on a global stage, including at the foundational model layer. 𝗟𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱. Cc: Judith Dada, Robert Lacher Read more about why we invested here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eVg3rhXK