Urbanic secures 150 million US dollars to boost AI design

London-based fashion brand Urbanic has closed a 150 million US dollar series C funding round to accelerate the company’s growth and expansion of technology-driven and socially responsible fashion designs.

The round was backed by Switzerland’s Mirabaud Lifestyle Impact and Innovation Fund, New York-based public-private hybrid investment firm D1 Capital Partners, JAM Fund and other global investors and European luxury fashion families. Previous backers include Nexus Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital.

The capital raised will support the company’s mission to transform the fashion industry by leveraging its proprietary AI and socially responsible approach throughout the value chain.

James Wellwood, founding partner at Urbanic, said in a statement: “We launched Urbanic in 2019 with the simple idea that clothing does not need to be expensive to be differentiated, stylish, and socially responsible.

“We will continue to leverage groundbreaking technology and partnerships with manufacturers and suppliers who comply with the highest standard of international working conditions that protect our people and our planet. We are grateful for the support of our investors whose funding will meaningfully accelerate our ability to bring new designs and clothing to our customers across our markets globally.”

The womenswear blends innovation and responsibility by leveraging AI and machine learning-based models, which are supported by its proprietary large language model (LLM) that is trained on a variety of codebases to “systematically generate fashion designs, AIGC-based creatives and content, and improve overall supply chain efficiency to the next level for the fashion industry”.