Artbreeder

Reclaiming time for
Artbreeder's CEO to
focus on what matters

Artbreeder makes AI art accessible to everyone. Genetically modify images with Splicer, generate whole universes with Worlds, and blend together any combination of text and images with Mixer.

UNEXPECTED GROWTH

Going it alone

When his rough MVP of an AI art tool went viral in December 2021, the founder, CEO, and sole employee of Artbreeder was suddenly faced with all the opportunities and challenges that come with explosive growth.

On top of building features, he had to worry about support, maintenance, debugging, and adapting the app's infrastructure to handle millions of new users. Not to mention remaining relevant in the fast-moving AI landscape.

As you might expect, despite his best efforts, tech debt started to accumulate and important operations started to slip.

So as longtime Artbreeder fans, we jumped at the opportunity when he posted on Twitter looking for help.

STRONG FOUNDATIONS

Architecting
reliability

We started by working together to understand the challenges he was facing (like navigating the breakneck pace of advances in AI) and designed a way forward.

Our first step was building a platform for shipping quickly and to a high standard of quality. We reduced bugs by migrating to TypeScript, improved developer experience by kicking off a gradual SvelteKit refactor, and modernized the app's central image editing experience.

COMPOSABLE UX

Shipping a
new feature
in 24 hours

With a solid foundation laid, we set out to accelerate Artbreeder's development process even further.

To that end, we worked with the design team to build out a component library and supporting design system. By snapping together well-engineered components, a new model could drop on Monday and Artbreeder could ship a new feature using it on Tuesday.

STRATEGY AND CREATIVITY

Freedom to
focus

Our combination of strong technical and design infrastructure has freed up the CEO to focus on what actually matters: defining product strategy in the fast-moving AI landscape, prototyping new ways to fold machine learning into the creative process, and nourishing imagination in both Artbreeder's products and its people.

These initial projects went great, and we've continued working with Artbreeder for the past three years. Let us know if you'd like to hear about some of our other work together.