BLNG AI just secured a $3M seed round led by Speedinvest with backup from Cove Fund, eSeed.vc, and focal, and they didn’t show up with a deck full of fluff and market-size charts. They walked in with a generative AI engine that takes a designer’s napkin sketch and spits out a photorealistic 3D render in under two seconds. That’s not “nice to have.” That’s blood sport for a 482 billion dollar global jewelry market that’s been stuck in Sketchpad Purgatory since Tiffany met CAD.
Let’s talk founding power. Valerie Leblond, former Creative Director at Cirque du Soleil, has made a career out of turning imagination into spectacle. Now she’s doing it again, this time, in carats and code. Dumëne Comploi, fresh off a run as an AI lead at Disney Imagineering, is orchestrating the backend wizardry. Their combined track record reads like the dream team of digital creativity if the Avengers built jewelry in Paris lofts and Los Angeles studios.
The product? A real-time AI rendering engine that turns sketches into 3D designs so lifelike they might just invoice themselves. A digital studio that lets designers virtually try on creations with custom avatars. And an enterprise API rolling out for luxury houses that know three things: exclusivity sells, speed wins, and AI just became their new creative director.
This isn’t about removing the artist, it’s about removing the time-suck. BLNG’s tools compress hours into seconds, kill repetitive workflows, and unlock creative iteration like it’s a live jam session with Miles Davis. That’s why they’re already piloting with LVMH subsidiaries. That’s why they bagged the 2024 LVMH InnovationAward. And that’s why Vogue Business named them one of their “100 Innovators” of the year. Some companies get press. BLNG gets co-signed.
And if you're wondering where the money’s going, try 40% into AI R&D, 30% to expanding their Paris-to-LA runway, 20% to locking down enterprise sales, and 10% into an app that’s set to launch this fall for the indie designer crowd. They’re hiring across engineering, UX, and biz dev.
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