Napkin AI emerges from stealth with $10M to transform text into visuals

Napkin AI, a new visual AI platform that wants to support users in finding the right visuals to communicate their ideas effectively, has launched out of stealth with a $10 million investment from Accel and CRV. Founded by ex-Googler Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler, Napkin AI leverages various forms of generative AI to help users turn their text-based communications into clear, engaging, customizable visuals.

To get started, users can input documents, outlines, and presentations directly or prompt the app to generate some text. Napkin's platform will then display the input text in a canvas and append spark icons to the paragraphs of text. When clicked, the corresponding paragraph's text is converted to an editable visual, including images, flowcharts, graphs, infographics, Venn diagrams, and decision trees. By streamlining the creation visuals process, Napkin AI targets marketers, content creators, engineers, and professionals involved in selling ideas and creating content as its customer base.

In its current state, Napkin's platform has some limitations, such as hallucinations and difficulties processing more complex text that is not transformable into a visual. However, it does a remarkable job with text that has the potential to become an illustration. The team acknowledges that it's still early for Napkin and plans to invest the funding in product development and hiring AI engineers and graphic designers. The company is preparing paid subscription plans, but its web-based platform remains free during beta testing.