ComfyUI, a startup that helps creators control image, video, and audio outputs from diffusion models with a node-based workflow, has raised a $30 million funding round at a $500 million valuation.
The round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from other investors including Pace Capital, Chemistry, and TruArrow.
ComfyUI was started as an open-source project in 2023, shortly after the introduction of diffusion models. At that time, models like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E were barely functional, frequently making major mistakes, such as adding extra fingers to hands.
To address these limitations, the project founders developed a modular framework that gives creators granular control over every step of the generation process.
Their tool gained such significant traction among creative professionals that it eventually evolved into a formal startup. In late 2024, ComfyUI raised $19 million in Series A financing from investors including Chemistry Ventures, Cursor Capital, and Guillermo Rauch, founder of Vercel.
Although the latest diffusion models have come a long way from adding a sixth digit to hands, the need for the granular precision that ComfyUI offers has only grown.
“If you think about your typical prompt-based solution, like Midjourney or ChatGPT, you ask for something, it [gets only] 60% – 80% there,” Yoland Yan, ComfyUI’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “But to change that remaining 20%, you have to try this slot machine.”
Yan (pictured left) compared the process to playing in a casino because prompting the model to make a small change can result in a completely different output, including overwriting the parts that were already perfect.
ComfyUI’s node-based interface allows creators to link specific components of the generation pro …