Paradot(패러닷), the company behind creator-driven AI photography platform Carat(캐럿), has raised $1.5 million (KRW 2 billion) in Series A funding from Hana Ventures. This comes almost two years after a seed investment from MashUp Angels in November 2021.

Carat is an AI photo platform that provides free AI photo creation services such as AI profile, AI pop-up store and AI drawing board, allowing users to easily create different styles of AI photos based on templates. Carat has become the largest AI photo generation service in Korea, with more than 6 million photo generation requests per month in the six months since the launch of its AI profile service. Carat’s monthly photo generation requests are four times higher than SNOW’s 1.5 million monthly requests.

While global AI photo generation services have become a passing fad and failed to generate sustainable growth, Carat has been growing rapidly in active users and revenue for more than six months and has accumulated more than 2 million subscribers to date.

Paradot’s CEO, Jinuk Jang, has a background in platform services, having worked at Kakao Bank and Kakao Gifts, and the team members are also experts in developing platform services at Naver and Kakao, so the team has a wealth of experience and capabilities to grow the platform.

With this funding, Paradot plans to build a creator-based AI photo ecosystem where anyone can easily create, share and sell AI photo filters such as profiles, yearbooks and snapshots, and expand its scale and influence as a B2C AI photo creation platform.

Hunmo Kang, CIO and Jaeha Yu, Senior Venture Capitalist at Hana Ventures, who led the investment, said, “Photo/video production using generative AI technology is rapidly growing as a play culture around the world, and the emergence of a generative AI content platform after Snapchat/Instagram is expected. Carat’s business approach of building a creator-based AI content platform by lowering the technical barriers to generative AI content production for general users and maximising creativity is expected to be effective. The Paradot team’s deep understanding of user needs and fast execution are their strengths.

Jinuk Jang, CEO of Paradot, said, “Generative AI has received a lot of expectations in terms of productivity, but it is also a technology that can create many innovations in our daily lives and entertainment.” “Contrary to the prejudice that B2C AI photography services are a one-time fad, Carat has established itself as a service that customers use every day, and we will continue to provide services that satisfy customers.”