Dessn raises $6M for its production focused design tool

A new startup called Dessn has raised $6M to build AI-powered design tools that work directly with production codebases.

Davis raises $5.5m pre-seed to compress real-estate development from months to days
Davis raises $5.5m pre-seed to compress real-estate development from months to days

The Paris-based AI-native real-estate company, founded by Entrepreneurs First alumni Mehdi Rais and Amine Chraibi, has Heartcore and Balderton co-leading the round, an unusual cap-table for a pre-seed. The technical pitch is more interesting than the h…

Airbnb co-founder taps Peter Arnell as first US chief brand architect

Arnell joins Gebbia’s National Design Studio under Trump to unify UX across 27,000 federal sites and streamline how Americans use government services.

Freepik rebrands as Magnific: a bootstrapped, profitable $230M ARR AI creative platform
Freepik rebrands as Magnific: a bootstrapped, profitable $230M ARR AI creative platform

The new name unifies what was previously fragmented across Freepik (stock assets), Magnific (AI upscaling), and several other products. One million paying subscribers. 250 enterprise customers, including BBC, Puma, and Amazon Prime Video. CEO Joaquín C…

How Arpit Grawal designed distribution ecosystems for 2.5 Billion consumers in emerging markets
How Arpit Grawal designed distribution ecosystems for 2.5 Billion consumers in emerging markets

Arpit Agrawal’s career has been shaped by a single, consistent focus: expanding access. For more than a decade, he has worked at the intersection of global brands and emerging markets, building distribution and retail ecosystems that connect products w…

Canva apologizes after its AI tool replaces ‘Palestine’ in designs
Canva apologizes after its AI tool replaces ‘Palestine’ in designs

One of Canva’s new AI features has been caught replacing the word “Palestine” in designs. The Magic Layers feature – which is designed to break flat images out into separate editable components – isn’t supposed to make visible alterations to user designs, but it was found by X user @ros_ie9 to automatically switch the phrase […]

Google’s new gradient icon design is coming to more apps
Google’s new gradient icon design is coming to more apps

In late 2025, Google started rolling out new icons with a gradient design. Now it seems the new look is coming to the rest of Google’s apps. 9to5Google got its hands on images of the new icons that ditch the uniform circle design that tries to cram in every color of the Google logo. In […]

Ikea’s new inflatable chair doesn’t look like an inflatable chair
Ikea’s new inflatable chair doesn’t look like an inflatable chair

Ikea shared a sneak preview of three pieces from a new experimental collection, set to be fully revealed at an annual company event on May 13th. One of the pieces is an inflatable chair that looks like a far cry from the cheap and lumpy inflatable furniture popularized in the ’90s. This isn’t the first […]

OpenAI’s new image model reasons before it draws
OpenAI’s new image model reasons before it draws

The new model reasons about composition, searches the web for context, generates up to eight coherent images from one prompt, and renders text in non-Latin scripts with near-flawless accuracy. It also took the number one spot on the Image Arena leaderb…

Canva’s CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software
Canva’s CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software

Today, I’m talking with Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO of Canva, a popular online design tool. I always enjoy talking with Melanie. She was last on the show a couple of years ago, just as the AI revolution was coming to the worlds of art and design. At the time, Canva had escaped a lot […]