Company Raises $5 M from First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures to Automate the Design of Everyday Work

Beautiful.AI announced the launch of the first artificial intelligence-powered presentation tool, which enables anyone to build clean, modern, and professionally-designed slides – quickly and easily.

Beautiful.AI addresses the two biggest challenges that individuals face in creating effective visual presentations: slide design and production time. According to the 2018 Presentation Quality Gap survey, 73 percent of presenters have felt “self-conscious” about the visual appearance of their slides and 62 percent have delivered a presentation that didn’t meet their own standards because they “ran out of time.”

“We’ve all experienced those moments – tinkering with text boxes at 2 a.m., drawing boxes and circles and then trying to align them, or spending hours looking for the right image for our slide. We’re using AI to give users the benefits of professional-quality design without the pain of spending hours, or even days, perfecting their presentations,” said Mitch Grasso, founder, Beautiful.AI.

Also Read: How To Avoid Being ‘First Down’: Lessons To Learn From Super Bowl LII

Beautiful.AI is built on the company’s Design AI technology, which uses heuristic techniques to apply the rules of good design in real time, saving users time and ensuring their presentations follow best practices. The system also automatically applies constraints to prevent users from violating these best practices, such as typing too much text on a slide.

The tool features more than 50 built-in “smart” templates to help users visualize their ideas instantly, all of which can be easily customized within minutes using simple, intuitive controls and automated design features. A searchable image library is also available with millions of custom icons and royalty-free images that are automatically placed and formatted for the user.

Also Read: The Evolution of Presentations

Beautiful.AI has raised $5 million in Series A funding to support the testing, development and expansion of its AI-powered technology. First Round Capital, the first investor in Uber, and Shasta Ventures, one of the first investors in Nest, participated in the round.

Prior to Beautiful.AI, Mitch Grasso was founder and CEO of SlideRocket, cloud-based presentation software that focused on team collaboration with enterprise customers including Discovery Networks, Disney, Sony, and Twenty-First Century Fox. SlideRocket was acquired by VMware in 2011.

Recommended Read: 28 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Affect Your Business and Life in 2018