Black Forest Labs reportedly looks to raise about $100M at a $1B valuation

Black Forest Labs, the makers of the FLUX.1 models and current provider of Grok's unfiltered image generation capabilities, has been on a swift trajectory since releasing its model suite this August when it also shared it had raised a $31 million seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Less than two months from these milestones, the company is reportedly trying to raise approximately $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, a daring jump from its more sensible $150 million post-money valuation following the closing of its seed funding round.

Black Forest Labs has plenty of material with which to attract investors: its expert-studded founding team includes some of the biggest names in image diffusion models; Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser, Dominik Lorenz, and CEO Robin Rombach created the technology currently powering Stability AI's image and video generation models. Stability AI has already helped define the current landscape of AI-powered media generation, which has set a difficult precedent to ignore when evaluating Black Forest Labs' potential.

As a result, it is unlikely anyone will doubt the startup's promise to deliver state-of-the-art text-to-video generation accessible to everyone. Moreover, Black Forest Labs' continuing collaboration with X will become an obvious selling point, since the social media platform will become a natural outlet to showcase Black Forest Labs' technology and release its products to a significant audience. The more practical details of the funding round are still unclear, but Lightspeed has been floated as a potential investor.