The startup closed Pre-Series A Round Led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from previous round lead DCM
BERKELEY, Calif., Feb. 26, 2024 — FlowGPT, an inclusive platform fostering an open ecosystem for AI application creators and the community, announced it has raised $10 million in a Pre-Series A round. The round was led by Goodwater Capital, the world’s largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on consumer technology, with participation from DCM, a global early stage VC firm, which led the company’s prior round while the company was still in stealth. FlowGPT is the largest open source store for AI-native applications, with a mission to bring AI to everyone. Since the company’s launch in January 2023, FlowGPT has attracted millions of users monthly across 110 countries. FlowGPT’s engaged user base has developed more than 100,000 AI applications, for use on LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Google PaLM and open source models like Pygmalion.
“We believe the biggest future for AI is in open ecosystems,” said Coddy Johnson, Partner at lead investor Goodwater Capital. “FlowGPT is helping to lead the way by building the largest open platform for AI apps, with the widest choice for users and with the most flexibility and freedom for creators to choose their models and collaborate with their communities.”
Before LLMs, developing software required a whole team of professional engineers, designers and product managers. The high cost and required skill base were barriers to creating software solutions, leaving a huge number of problems unsolved. FlowGPT founders, Jay Dang and Lifan Wang recognized this issue and the opportunity for LLMs to enable anyone to create AI-native applications using natural language (prompts). With a vision that AI would democratize software development, Jay and Lifan created FlowGPT, the largest all-in-one AI app store and community where users can directly explore, use, and create AI-native applications powered by the creativity of creators.
FlowGPT will use the funding to expand its engineering and research teams globally. The company is actively hiring front-end and back-end development engineers, mobile development engineers and product and operation staff. In addition, the funding will be used to further develop a dynamic and engaging community.
“Real world problems are being solved everyday through the creation and collaboration in the vibrant FlowGPT open ecosystem platform,” said Hurst Lin, General Partner at DCM. “This platform serves as a unique space where top prompt creators converge to creatively build cutting-edge AI apps. We’re happy to support the FlowGPT team in actively seeking to expand their team to harness diverse talents, perspectives, and expertise in shaping the future of AI-driven solutions.”
FlowGPT is firmly committed to empowering creators, understanding that a thriving ecosystem hinges on fostering an attractive, engaging, and dynamic environment for them. To bolster this vision, FlowGPT recently partnered with industry giants such as Google, Leonardo.ai, and Opus Clip for the latest FlowGPT Hackathon Season 3. This initiative attracted more than double the previous number of participants. This level of engagement underscores FlowGPT’s dedication to nurturing a vibrant and innovative community of creators.
In the near future, FlowGPT will also be launching their Flow mobile app. The Flow mobile app is a brand new multimedia experience that differs from the current website. It combines the power of LLMs, agents, text to speech, text to image and text to video, to bring AI to users’ daily lives.
About FlowGPT:
FlowGPT is the largest open source AI application creator community with millions of monthly active users. The platform is designed to make it easy for anyone to find, share, and use prompts to develop AI applications. With thousands of prompts available, users are sure to find what they’re looking for. The easy-to-use playground helps users to quickly and easily implement the prompts that they find directly into their work.
The FlowGPT community is built on the principles of open source and collaboration, meaning that anyone can contribute to the growing database of prompts. The company’s core mission is that people without a programming background can leverage the platform to write AI applications. Visit https://flowgpt.com/ to learn more.
About Goodwater:
Goodwater’s mission is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. We are the world’s largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on consumer technology, with over 80 venture and growth investments and over 600 seed deals across more than 50 countries. Our consumer-only sector focus enables a systematic global approach, and our proprietary software platform helps us to identify and support the best companies in all corners of the globe.
About DCM:
DCM is a global venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Tokyo with over $4.2 billion under management. DCM has invested in more than 400 early-stage technology companies globally and provides hands-on operational guidance and a global network of business and financial resources. DCM has backed industry-leading companies, including 51job, 58.com, Bill.com, BitAuto, Careem (Uber), Dangdang, Fortinet, Freee, FuboTV, Happy Elements, Hims & Hers, Houchebang (ManBang), Gigacloud, Kakao Talk, Kuaishou, Matterport, Musical.ly (TikTok), Quantasing, Sling Media, Sansan, SoFi, TanTan, Tuniu, UCloud, Uxin, Vipshop, YSB, Weekend Health (Weight Watchers) and Wrike. DCM has also led investments in rising startups, such as Assured, Brigit, CADDI, Cherry, DXY, Enechain, EvenUp, Figure Technologies, Immersively, Linc’well, Litmatch, Magic Moment, Maimai, Plenty, Tempo, and YunQuNa. For more information, visit https://www.dcm.com.
SOURCE FlowGPT
