Traditionally, marketers depended on designers and other creative experts to produce images and videos for personalized online advertising. In late 2024, the seven-year-old startup Hightouch introduced an AI-powered service that enables marketing professionals to create custom content for major brands like Domino’s, Chime, PetSmart, and Spotify—all without needing to involve internal design teams or external ad agencies. This new offering has seen significant success.

“Before the advent of generative AI, it was virtually impossible for someone without extensive design experience to create consumer-grade marketing assets,” explained Kashish Gupta, Hightouch’s co-CEO. The company is co-led by Tejas Manohar, a former engineering manager at Segment, a customer data platform that was acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion in 2020.

However, Hightouch’s solution extends beyond the capabilities of standard AI models alone. The company notes that many brands initially tried to create ad campaigns using general foundational models—broad AI systems that power tools like chatbots but lack specific brand knowledge—only to find that the resulting images and videos did not meet their brand standards.

“Foundation models weren’t familiar with the details of specific consumer brands, whether it was colors, fonts, tone, or existing brand assets,” Gupta stated. “The large language models would sometimes invent products that don’t actually exist, and you can’t run advertising or email campaigns for products that aren’t real.”

To maintain brand consistency, Hightouch integrates directly with its customers’ existing creative tools, such as the popular design platform Figma, internal photo libraries, and content management systems. By drawing from these sources, the platform effectively “learns” a company’s unique brand identity.

Hightouch’s AI agents then use these photos, designs, and customer insights to help marketers build personalized ad campaigns independently, eliminating the need to wait for designers or developers. The aim is to generate images and videos that appear professionally designed, avoiding the artificial or generic look often associated with AI-generated content.

“For instance, Domino’s will never generate a pizza from scratch,” Gupta illustrated. “They’ll always use existing pizza images and integrate them into an ad where the background or surrounding elements might be AI-generated.”

The company, which currently employs around 380 people, achieved a valuation of $1.2 billion in February 2025 when it secured an $80 million Series C funding round led by Sapphire Ventures.

Pictured above, left to right: Tejas Manohar and Kashish Gupta.