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.