December 19, 2022
Find new clients. Receive a lead list of hundreds of companies looking to scale their business every month.
The art industry is a lucrative business, with the global art market estimated to be worth $65.1 billion in 2021. However, there are relatively few startups attempting to disrupt the industry.
Therefore it is especially highlighting those startups that are undertaking the challenge - and have even convinced venture capital firms to back them.
Here is a list of 17 art startups that raised funding in 2022 and are worth keeping an eye on in 2023.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Founders: Max Deutsch, Valentin Perez
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $50,000,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $50,000,000
Investors: Human Capital, WndrCo, OVO Fund, Next Play Ventures, Floodgate
What they do: Studio provides hands-on learning experiences alongside top creators
Headquarters: Miami, Florida, United States
Founders: Justin Melillo, Matthew Hoerl
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $14,600,000 (Series A)
Total funding: $16,600,000
Investors: Protocol Labs, Gaingels, Everyrealm, LongHash Ventures, Big Brain Holdings
What they do: Mona’s mission is to empower people around the world to create, collect, and share high quality immersive experiences on the blockchain, growing the Open Metaverse. Mona is the medium of the metaverse.
Headquarters: Paris, Ile-de-France, France
Founders: Clément Ouizille, Edouard Gouin
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $35,000,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $47,060,094
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Alma Mundi Ventures, Acton Capital, Innoport, Alexandre Berriche
What they do: Convelio is a global logistics startup specialized in bulky, fragile, and high-value items. The company was founded in 2017 by Clément Ouizille and Edouard Gouin and is headquartered in Paris, France.
Headquarters: Singapore, Central Region, Singapore
Founders: Aleksandar Abu Samra, Arun Sugumaran, Taryn Mook
Year founded: 2020
Latest funding: $1,700,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $1,800,000
Investors: Antler, 500 Global, East Ventures
What they do: AWST brings Web3 to brands, helping them launch NFT collections on any blockchain. Brands can drop NFTs with each purchase of their product, via integrated shopfront, QR codes, or as gifts to the attendees of their exhibitions and events.
Headquarters: Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Founders: Evelien Remmelts, Martijn Leenaers, Thomas Bunnik
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $4,797,907 (Seed)
Total funding: $11,206,606
Investors: Daniel Gebler, Thomas Bunnik
What they do: Whoppah is the smart first class marketplace for secondhand design interior and art that will turn your house into your dream home. In addition to well-known brands such as Charles Eames, Artifort and Philippe Starck, you will also find and sell special sculptures and paintings by various artists. The first-class offering is always selected by our experts. Discover Whoppah and be amazed by our treasure room’s unique items for your home. Whoppah was founded by entrepreneurial duo Thomas Bunnik and Evelien Remmelts with the aim of making beautiful secondhand and hand made interior items easily available. By doing so, Whoppah stimulates reuse in the light of a sustainable way of living. In addition to a consumer platform for first class secondhand interior, Whoppah is also a marketplace for artists and companies such as vintage stores and international vintage dealers.
Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Founders: Adam Meghji, Craig Follett
Year founded: 2020
Latest funding: $6,000,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $6,000,000
Investors: Mistral Venture Partners, Real Ventures, Andrew Chau, Mike Murchison, Tinie Tempah
What they do: Peggy is the secure marketplace for investment-grade art. In times of societal crisis and turmoil throughout humanity, artists pave the way for social change and transformation. As an investment, art is among the only appreciating asset classes you can also enjoy (like real estate), plus is uncorrelated to traditional markets. This is why billionaires and banks seek out art as a safe haven to preserve wealth in their portfolios. Yet tragically, the rest of us are unable to participate in the art market, and support the practice of emerging artists who create transformative messages through their works. Peggy partners with galleries and artists, to make living with and investing in art accessible to all. Finally you can buy incredible art at a price you can afford, and can later sell to fellow collectors if your tastes change or you seek to rebalance your art investments.
Headquarters: Vienna, Wien, Austria
Founders: Amir Akta
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $605,528 (Seed)
Total funding: $1,786,983
Investors: Benjamin Ruschin, Vienna Business Agency, Peter Steinberger, Nikolaus Bauer-Harnoncourt, Georg Bauer
What they do: Return on Art is the first marketplace allowing collectors direct access to expert-curated art with the ability to resell works hassle-free. We leverage tehnology to unit the art market's most important stakeholder: Artist, Curators & Collectors to sell, share and colect art online.
Headquarters: Abidjan, Lagunes, Côte d'Ivoire
Founders: Abdoul Kadry Diallo, Luc Perussault Diallo, Moulaye Taboure
Year founded: 2016
Latest funding: $6,137,639 (Seed)
Total funding: $8,353,558
Investors: VestedWorld, Id4 ventures, Investisseurs & Partenaires, Joseph Tsai, Saviu Ventures
What they do: ANKA is a platform to discover, buy, and sell African fashion, arts, and crafts. ANKA’s goal is to allow African creation lovers to live their passion while allowing the creators to live from theirs. ANKA facilitates transactions and exchanges directly between buyers and sellers on both sides of the world, in a user-friendly and secure way.
Headquarters: Singapore, Central Region, Singapore
Founders: Martha Zhang
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $10,000,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $10,000,000
Investors: Binance Labs, Alameda Research, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), GBV Capital, Leland Ventures
What they do: StarryNift is the first integrated gamified platform and one-stop shop that provides creation, incubation, auction, and transaction for NFT collectibles. The mission is to empower creativity by technology and democratize value appreciation by crypto as DAO. The vision is to unlock new ways for creators, collectors, and investors to explore the metaverse of Game+Art+Defi+NFT ingredients.
Headquarters: Palo Alto, California, United States
Founders: Jonas Lamis
Year founded: 2019
Latest funding: $7,500,000 (Series A)
Total funding: $8,500,000
Investors: Collab+Currency, True Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, Flamingo DAO, Infinite Capital
What they do: Quantum Art is the first platform focused solely on photographers and their work, curating and dropping NFT collections and making NFT photography accessible for both artists and collectors.
Headquarters: London, England, United Kingdom
Founders: Adam Karren, Alex Fleseriu, Andrei Balici, Gustavo Milstein, Horia Stanciu, Larisa Barbu, Paul James, Roberto Malutan, Tiberiu Oprea
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $3,240,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $3,240,000
Investors: Big Brain Holdings, Cultur3 Capital, Vandelay Ventures, Cozomo De’Medici
What they do: Before the blockchain, digital art had been unable to accrue value due to the “copy and paste” problem that plagued digital work.The blockchain enables digital asset ownership through a publicly distributed immutable ledger that can track the provenance. The results have been explosive over the past 2 years. From 2021 to 2022, the digital art market exploded from a few million in sales to over 4.45 billion in volume. Exchange provides a home to creators of digital art worldwide.
Headquarters: Paris, Ile-de-France, France
Founders: Fabian Langlet, Jean-Sébastien Beaucamps
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $9,977,420 (Seed)
Total funding: $10,377,420
Investors: Kima Ventures, Alven, Aglaé Ventures, Cygni Capital, Thomas France
What they do: LaCollection is creating a new way of owning digital versions of a physical artwork by working with cultural institutions. Like a limited edition “digital lithography”, collectors are now able to own certified digital twins of masterpieces from the world’s greatest museums, galleries, and artists.
Headquarters: Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Founders: Austin Senseman, Nathan McMinn
Year founded: 2018
Latest funding: $3,000,000 (Series A)
Total funding: $4,040,000
Investors: Jemison Investment Company, Benson Capital Partners, Bonaventure Capital, Timberline Holding
What they do: Conserv, a software and sensors business, is changing the art conservation market with a conservation-focused platform that brings together all of the jobs conservation professionals do into a single place. Conserv's initial focus is on environmental monitoring, a non-optional conservation job, where they've developed the only wireless, conservation-focused monitoring system in the space.
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Founders: Elad Katav, Ido Ophir
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $5,000,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $7,500,000
Investors: Two Lanterns Venture Partners, Jo-Ann Stores
What they do: Cupixel Inc. is a live and on-demand creative technology platform that uses augmented reality to enable anyone to create art. Cupixel's cutting-edge technology includes “Smart Trace,” an AR-powered feature that projects licensed artworks or personal photos from a user's phone onto any surface. The app also allows users to design their own artwork and resize it or drag it across the surface before painting or tracing the layers, and includes community features so people can share their art with others, chat with artists, and be part of a personalized experience.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Founders: Stacey Tiveron
Year founded: 2017
Latest funding: $5,500,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $5,500,000
Investors: Jaclyn Johnson, BoltRock Holdings
What they do: Ronati supports, inspires, and assists all constituents of the art, vintage, and antiques industry. The company's inaugural product, the eCommerce Manager (eCM), is an inventory management tool that allows dealers to centralize their inventory and manage it across multiple marketplaces, simply and easily. Built specifically for and with sellers of ever-changing stock, the eCM makes online and offline stock management a breeze.
Headquarters: Miami, Florida, United States
Founders: Ariana The Techie
Year founded: 2021
Latest funding: $3,300,000 (Seed)
Total funding: $3,300,000
Investors: Presight Capital, Harlem Capital Partners, CapitalT, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Black Venture Capital Consortium
What they do: Mueshi is a decentralized Global Art Exchange platform that allows investors to fractionally invest in artworks. Investors discover diverse artworks to buy and sell fractional shares, while artists receive pay and re-sale royalties for their work.
Headquarters: New York, New York, United States
Founders: Valentino Vettori
Year founded: 2018
Latest funding: $3,700,000 (Series B)
Total funding: $4,700,000
Investors: Downey Ventures, Vanadium Capital Management LLC, Andrea Venturelli, Andrew Silberstein, 51 Blue Stone Ln
What they do: Arcadia Earth is an immersive, high growth, high return experiential platform, designed to inform, inspire, and activate our community to impact our planet through environmental storytelling positively.
From inventory management of antiques to blockchain technology, the art industry is overdue for a startup revolution - and 2022’s companies have taken us a lot closer.
These 17 art startups are likely to make big moves in 2023 and beyond, and we are excited to follow their stories.
You may also like:
Receive a lead list of hundreds of companies that just raised funding to scale their business every month straight to your inbox.
