Flora, a design platform utilized by creative teams at Alibaba, Brex, the agency Pentagram, and Lionsgate, has reached a significant new chapter. The startup revealed on Tuesday that it has secured $42 million in a Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures. Across the industry, generative AI models are increasingly being integrated into design workflows through prompts and various multimodal inputs. Established software firms such as Adobe, Figma, and Canva have all introduced features to place AI at the core of their offerings. In parallel, emerging design startups argue that truly harnessing AI and experimenting with diverse models requires entirely new workflows and interfaces.

To meet these shifting demands, Flora enables customers to generate media assets—including images and video—using image, text, or video inputs. Users can also apply prompts to modify and build new nodes through multiple iterations. All generated versions are visually mapped together on a canvas, providing a clear and manageable creation flow. From any node, users can branch out to develop new variations of the concept or creative project they are building. For example, in crafting a marketing video, someone could supply reference images and text prompts to establish a concept, then apply different prompts to produce videos in contrasting styles for comparison.

Flora’s CEO and founder, Weber Wong, was formerly an investor at Menlo Ventures. He later enrolled in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which blends technology and art. Flora’s alpha version debuted in 2024 as part of that program, with a more stable release following last year.

Wong explained that he identified an opportunity to design a new interface that could stitch different AI models together into a complete workflow on a single screen. “Our realization while building Flora was that the generative computing paradigm needed a new creative interface. If you think about the personal computing paradigm, that’s what Adobe was for: controlling every single pixel on the screen to make one piece of media at a time. You now have these models that can make entire pieces of media like that. So the natural creative opportunity is to take a step back and design the entire creative workflow,” he said.

He added that while node-based creation has traditionally been complex, incorporating AI allows designers to rapidly explore multiple iterations and ideas. With Flora, users can create media or concepts from text, image, or video inputs.

The surge in generative models has made AI-first startups highly sought after. Last October, OpenAI acquired Sequoia-backed Visual Electric, and Figma purchased the node-based editor Weavy. Separately, Krea, which also offers a node-based editor, raised $83 million in April.

Wong observed that the launch of tools like Flora creates an overlap between professionals and broader AI users, leading more people to adopt such platforms for design and ideation. Despite growing demand, he believes wider adoption depends on improved user education. To that end, the company deploys creatives to collaborate with organizations and help them use Flora effectively. Although geared toward creatives, the tool is straightforward enough for business owners or individual users.

Flora’s subscription plans start at $16 per month when billed annually, with scaled pricing for agencies and enterprises. The new funding will be used to expand enterprise sales, increase marketing efforts, and enhance the product with better creative controls and traditional editing features so professionals can complete projects without switching tools.

The startup currently employs 25 people and expects to double or triple that headcount by year’s end. “Where we got excited about Flora is that the team is doing the same work as Figma of democratizing product design and bringing more people into the design process because of how they built the product to make it approachable and collaborative,” Brad said. He added that from a market perspective, Flora can influence a broader creative process across industries like fashion, advertising, photography, and branding.

The Series A round also included participation from Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Twitch founder Justin Kan, Frame.io CEO Emery Wells, Hanabi Capital GP Mike Volpi, Menlo Ventures, a16z Games, Fal co-founders Gorkem Yurtseven, Burkay Gur, and Batuhan Taskaya, Long Journey Ventures, Cyan Banister, Factorial Capital managing partner Matt Hartman, and MSCHF founder Gabe Whaley. With this raise, Flora’s total funding to date has reached $52 million.