Historically, marketers depended on designers to produce visuals for tailored online ad campaigns. However, in late 2024, seven-year-old startup Hightouch introduced an AI-driven platform enabling marketing professionals to independently create custom content for brands like Domino’s, Chime, PetSmart, and Spotify, without needing design teams or ad agencies.
The new AI service has seen remarkable success. Within 20 months of its launch, Hightouch generated an additional $70 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), reaching a total of $100 million ARR, according to TechCrunch. Co-CEO Kashish Gupta remarked on the pre-AI era, stating, “It was impossible for those without extensive design skills to create consumer-level assets.” He co-leads the company with Tejas Manohar, a former engineering manager at Segment, which was acquired by Twilio.
What sets Hightouch apart is its capability to harness specific brand knowledge, addressing a significant limitation of general AI models. Many brands initially tried creating ad campaigns using broad AI systems, only to discover that the images produced often missed the mark in terms of “on-brand” standards. Gupta pointed out that foundational AI models often lack the nuanced understanding of a brand’s specific elements, leading to the generation of fictitious products not appropriate for marketing.
To maintain brand consistency, Hightouch integrates directly with its clients’ existing creative tools, such as Figma and various content management systems. By accessing these resources, the platform gains insights into a company’s brand identity. Subsequently, its AI agents leverage this information to help marketers autonomously generate personalised ad campaigns, eliminating delays associated with designer approval.
Hightouch’s objective is to deliver visuals that resemble those crafted by professional designers, steering clear of the superficial or generic results often linked with AI-generated content. For instance, Gupta explained that Domino’s would use pre-existing images of pizzas rather than generating new ones, integrating these into ads where backgrounds and other elements may be AI-generated.
As of early 2025, Hightouch employs around 380 staff members and was valued at $1.2 billion following a successful $80 million Series C funding round led by Sapphire Ventures.
In summary, Hightouch is revolutionising the way marketers create content, making it feasible to produce high-quality ad campaigns quickly and independently, while ensuring adherence to individual brand standards.
Fanpage: TechArena.au
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