OpenArt
Headquarters
San Francisco, CAFounded
2022CEO / Founder
Coco MaoEmployees
11-50Funding
Series A — $35MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.8/10Website
openart.ai/
Profile updated
About OpenArt
OpenArt is a San Francisco-based AI content platform that lets users generate and edit images, videos, audio, and reusable AI characters without design software. Founded in 2022 by former Google engineers Coco Mao and John Qiao, it began as a searchable library of AI-generated images and prompts, often described as a "Pinterest for AI art," before expanding into an all-in-one generation suite.
The platform aggregates leading third-party models, including Google Veo, OpenAI's Sora, Kling, and Seedance, alongside its own tools such as Director for storyboard-driven video, Smart Shot for multi-angle cuts, and character consistency across scenes, all accessible through a single credit-based subscription. OpenArt targets hobbyists, independent creators, and small businesses, and reports use by teams at companies including Google, Netflix, and Disney. By 2025 the platform had grown to roughly 8 million monthly active users.
OpenArt raised a $5 million seed round in 2023 backed by Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures, followed by a $30 million Series A led by Canaan Partners in January 2026, bringing total funding to about $35 million. The company reached roughly $70 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025 while operating profitably with a lean team of around 20 employees, led by co-founder and CEO Coco Mao.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by OpenArt
All products by OpenArt reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores OpenArt
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed OpenArt's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.8 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who OpenArt competes with, and how they differ.
Krea leans into real-time, live-canvas generation and per-model LoRA training with a higher 22K image-upscale ceiling, while OpenArt bundles a reusable Character Builder identity and multi-scene Director videos under one credit pool at a lower entry price, per OpenArt's own published head-to-head comparison.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedHiggsfield focuses narrowly on photorealistic AI-influencer personas with face consistency for Instagram, TikTok, and Reels, while OpenArt pairs character consistency with full narrative production (One-Click Story, Director's multi-scene storyboards) across 50+ aggregated generation models.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Runway targets professional filmmakers and designers with a text-to-video production toolkit (inpainting, motion tracking, background removal), whereas OpenArt packages character-consistent storytelling for a broader consumer-creator audience under a single credit plan.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Leonardo.ai, now part of Canva's design suite, serves game developers, concept artists, and designers generating individual images and short clips, while OpenArt is built around persistent AI characters and multi-scene story videos rather than one-off asset generation.
2 products reviewed on TopReviewed
Midjourney remains a pure text-to-image generator run through Discord/web with no native video or character-consistency tooling, while OpenArt adds persistent characters, One-Click Story video generation, and a Director workflow across 50+ aggregated models.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in OpenArt's history, with sources.
- Launch
Launched "Director" — multi-scene "vibe directing" video tool
OpenArt launched Director, a storyboard-driven tool letting users produce multi-scene AI videos with recurring characters by describing a "vibe" rather than writing technical prompts, targeting both Hollywood directors and everyday creators.
hollywoodreporter.com - Launch
Launched "Bot House," a fully AI-generated reality show
OpenArt Studios released Bot House, billed as the first AI-native reality show: six AI influencer characters, built and animated on OpenArt's own platform, compete in challenges for online fame.
x.com - Funding
Raised $30M Series A led by Canaan Partners
OpenArt raised a $30M Series A led by Canaan Partners, with existing investors Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures participating, bringing total funding to roughly $35M. The round followed a year of growth to 8M MAU and $70M+ ARR with a ~20-person team.
canaan.com - Launch
Launched "One-Click Story" video feature in open beta
OpenArt launched One-Click Story in open beta, letting users turn a single sentence, script, or song into a one-minute video with a story arc and consistent characters, aggregating 50+ AI models including DALL-E 3, Imagen, Flux Kontext, and Stable Diffusion. The feature powered the viral "brain rot" video trend.
techcrunch.com - Funding
Raised $5M seed round from Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures
OpenArt raised a $5M seed round backed by Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures, the same two investors who later joined its 2026 Series A.
techcrunch.com - Founded
Founded by ex-Google PM Coco Mao and co-founder John Qiao
Coco Mao (former Google engineer/PM, Area 120 alum) and John Qiao left Google to found OpenArt in 2022, initially a "Pinterest for AI images" prompt-browsing site that hit #1 on Hacker News.
techcrunch.com
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