Traditionally, entrepreneurs relied on designers and different artistic professionals to develop photos and movies for customized on-line advert campaigns.
In late 2024, seven-year-old startup Hightouch launched an AI-powered service that permits advertising and marketing professionals to create customized content material for manufacturers corresponding to Domino’s, Chime, PetSmart, and Spotify with out involving model design groups or advert businesses.
The providing has been extremely profitable. Since introducing its AI product 20 months in the past, Hightouch has added $70 million in annualized recurring income (ARR), it tells TechCrunch, bringing the startup to a complete of $100 million in ARR.
“Earlier than GenAI, it was unimaginable for somebody with out many, a few years of design expertise to create consumer-level belongings,” mentioned Kashish Gupta, Hightouch’s co-CEO. The corporate can be led by co-CEO Tejas Manohar, a former engineering supervisor at Phase, a buyer information platform acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion in 2020.
Nonetheless, Hightouch’s method goes past what customary AI fashions can do on their very own.
Hightouch says that many manufacturers initially tried to generate advert campaigns utilizing basic foundational fashions — broad AI methods that energy instruments like chatbots however lack information of particular manufacturers — solely to seek out the ensuing photos and movies failed to fulfill “on-brand” requirements.
“Basis fashions didn’t learn about particular client manufacturers, whether or not it was colours or fonts, tone, or belongings,” Gupta says. “The LLMs would hallucinate merchandise that didn’t exist, and you’ll’t do promoting and emails on merchandise that don’t exist.”
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To make sure model consistency, Hightouch connects on to its prospects’ current artistic instruments, corresponding to the favored design platform Figma, photograph libraries, and content material administration methods (CMS).
By pulling from these sources, the platform “learns” an organization’s particular model identification. Hightouch’s AI brokers then use these images, designs, and buyer insights to assist entrepreneurs construct customized advert campaigns autonomously, with out having to attend on designers or builders.
The objective of Hightouch’s AI is to create photos and movies that appear like they had been made by skilled designers, avoiding the “pretend” or generic look usually related to AI.
“For instance, Domino’s won’t ever generate a pizza,” Gupta says. “They’ll all the time use current photos of pizza, and so they’ll place it into an advert the place the background may be generated, and different issues may be generated round it.”
The corporate, which now employs roughly 380 individuals, was valued at $1.2 billion in February 2025 when it raised an $80 million Series C funding spherical led by Sapphire Ventures.
Pictured above, left to proper: Tejas Manohar, Josh Curl, and Kashish Gupta
