Jellyfish Intelligence Raises 70 Million Yuan in Series A Led by Source Code Capital

源码资本·October 12, 2021·1·5

Let everyone enjoy the beauty of design through AI intelligence.

Jellyfish Intelligence, a leading AI-powered design company in China, recently announced the completion of its RMB 70 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Source Code Capital, with participation from HSG and Hillhouse. Existing investors Yuanjing Capital and Microlight Venture Capital continued to increase their stakes, while China Renaissance served as the exclusive financial advisor. This marks Jellyfish Intelligence's second funding round closed in just three months following its angel round in June this year, bringing its total fundraising to over RMB 100 million in that short period. The proceeds will be primarily allocated to technology R&D, team expansion, and user growth.

Founded in November 2020, Jellyfish Intelligence is building a commercially viable intelligent design delivery platform that addresses comprehensive enterprise design needs, providing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with complete intelligent design and flexible supply chain solutions. Its current intelligent design services include brand identity design, packaging design, and product design, targeting micro and small brands, consumer goods companies, and new agricultural businesses in rural areas. The platform currently has 2 million registered users.

The company's core team brings nearly 20 years of accumulated experience in professional design. Chairman Wei Jia is the founder of LKK Design Group and a renowned designer. Founder and CEO Miao Zhuang holds dual master's degrees in design and innovation management from overseas institutions, and previously served as founder and general manager of LKK's London office, general manager of the national UED business group, and founder and general manager of Intelligent Mobility. Co-founder Zhipeng Zhou previously served as COO of LKKER, a shared design platform. Both Zhuang and Zhou are partners at LKK Design Group and have collaborated for years on innovative design services and B2B entrepreneurship. Core team members hail from prominent companies including LKK, Alibaba, NetEase, Meituan, and DiDi.

From its inception, Jellyfish Intelligence identified that the design industry's digital transformation had been sluggish, with the entire sector essentially dependent on human designers. This created widespread pain points for SMEs in areas such as brand image, packaging, and product design — opaque services, inconsistent quality, and high costs. In recent years, as national policies have continued to support SME development, an increasing number of micro and small enterprises, especially those in remote areas and agricultural businesses, have flourished. These enterprises urgently need professional, efficient, and accessible design services to break through their growth constraints.

Based on data algorithms grounded in design principles and industry know-how, Jellyfish Intelligence provides SMEs with design services that are "beautiful, accurate, fast, affordable, and commercially viable." Artificial intelligence enhances design efficiency while increasing certainty in design-to-production delivery, and provides enterprises with commercially usable copyright protection.

As a board member of Jellyfish Intelligence, Luo Yi of Source Code Capital commented: "Intelligent design has dramatically improved the efficiency of design services, enabling design to penetrate broad scenarios at extremely low cost. Over the past year, Jellyfish Intelligence has already served tens of thousands of paying customers. Going forward, the company will continue to empower the vast community of domestic brands and designers, providing a new form of design service that is more beautiful, more efficient, more standardized, and more closed-loop. We believe this team, with its deep insights into both technology and design, will continue to bring value to customers and inject innovation and breakthroughs into the design industry."

AI Algorithms Leading the Intelligent Design Industry

As early as the platform incubation phase, Jellyfish Intelligence entered the market through logo design and independently developed the "DaVinci AI Design Engine." Leveraging nearly 20 years of accumulated experience in the design industry and continuously沉淀 user data, the company has deeply integrated design principles, design models, and artificial intelligence technology to conduct full-chain design algorithm R&D. This enables data to flow seamlessly through design, production, and marketing processes, driving a revolution in online design technology. Its design model algorithms and design data value both rank at the forefront of China's intelligent design industry.

In June this year, Jellyfish Intelligence established a deep strategic partnership with BAAI, becoming the exclusive ecosystem partner in the design industry for "Wudao 2.0," the world's largest-scale intelligent model. Backed by large-model and large-ecosystem support, Jellyfish Intelligence has made rapid progress in vector graphics processing algorithms, image algorithms for copyright processes, design domain knowledge graphs, and intelligent design recommendations. In August, it launched DaVinci AI Design Engine 2.0. The latest engine enables user requirement understanding and analysis, high-quality and efficient image generation, precise design scheme recommendations, and aesthetic quality assessment and feedback. Users simply input a product name on the intelligent platform, and within 10 seconds can generate massive brand image and packaging design schemes, exponentially improving enterprise design efficiency.

DaVinci AI Design Engine

The company stated that this funding round will continue to strengthen its investment in algorithms, while simultaneously building an AI-human collaborative design platform to enable socialized design collaboration and creative asset accumulation. How to use technology to define "beauty" remains a challenge in the design industry with no precedent for reference. Through AI technology, the company is committed to making subjective needs objective, complex labels simple, design aesthetics quantifiable, and design processes algorithmic — all ongoing research priorities.

Throughout this year, the company has continued to focus on the synergy and linkage of design + copyright + supply chain, establishing a complete closed-loop business logic.

Regarding design "commercial viability," Jellyfish Intelligence achieves original design and copyright protection through copyright process algorithms and blockchain-based certification. Its intelligent logos are currently segmented into commercially usable, buyout, and registrable categories to meet diverse enterprise application scenarios. Design products purchased on the Jellyfish Intelligence platform come with copyright upon order placement, with blockchain-based rights confirmation and certification, supporting one-click evidence collection on-chain. Additionally, Jellyfish Intelligence provides trademark registration and intellectual property support for SMEs and agricultural business owners.

In packaging design, intelligent snack packaging design was recently launched, providing micro-brand owners, snack OEM manufacturers, and new agricultural households with one-stop delivery services for intelligent packaging design and flexible supply chain production. In product design, Jellyfish Intelligence connects with industrial belts and emerging brands in textiles, ceramics, and fast-moving consumer goods, offering personalized customization design options and flexible supply chain production. It currently holds an advantageous position among domestic intelligent design products in terms of user scale and paid user scale.

Intelligent Packaging 1.0 Now Live

Jellyfish Intelligence has established deep business partnerships with DingTalk, Alibaba Cloud, Alipay, Lark, and Meituan, providing one-stop accessible design services for merchants on these platforms. Recently, as a leading intelligent design brand, Jellyfish was invited to become the first intelligent design provider for Taobao Enterprise Services. At the same time, Jellyfish is also a strategic partner with Elezone, a digital supply chain platform; HanYi Fonts, a leading domestic font platform; and Visual China Group, the largest image material copyright platform.

A "Design x Algorithm x Internet" Talent Team

Behind the intelligent design platform is a cross-disciplinary team combining "design x algorithm x internet," with algorithm and technology R&D personnel accounting for nearly 80% of the team. The company's algorithm, technology, product, and operations leaders all come from major internet companies including Alibaba, NetEase, and Weibo, bringing extensive experience in large-scale internet product architecture design and operations management. The team also includes algorithm specialists in image processing, recommendation systems, and knowledge graphs; visual designers who understand the underlying logic of design; and technical talent from top internet companies. This hybrid, cross-disciplinary team collectively seeks breakthroughs and innovations in AI's application to design.

Going forward, the team will enhance its technical R&D capabilities by recruiting top international scientists in graphics and imaging, while continuing to attract talented individuals across design, algorithm, and technology domains. With the completion of this funding round, the company will have more resources to provide broader development opportunities and competitive industry compensation for talent across all dimensions, enabling exceptional people to tackle challenging problems together.

The Jellyfish Intelligence team has deep roots in the China market, with years of design service experience, profound industry understanding, and B2B business acumen. In the future, Jellyfish Intelligence will continue to invest in technology, improving the reliability and aesthetic quality of its AI design algorithms; connect and integrate more mature supply chains to enhance efficiency and quality; and penetrate deeper into regional industrial belts, contributing design power to economic and social development and the rise of domestic brands. Whether visiting rural fields to engage with farmer entrepreneurs or solving piecemeal design needs for small shop owners, Jellyfish Intelligence will use AI algorithms to bring "beauty" to more SMEs, allowing everyone to enjoy the beauty of design.