Storyblok raises $80M to add more AI to its ‘headless’ CMS aimed at non-technical people

Comment
If content is king, then the focus today is on how the king is expanding the empire: Print and traditional media first got augmented by websites, and now websites are being augmented by a fast-expanding landscape of apps, social media platforms and content created by artificial intelligence. Now, a company that’s building for that content horizon has raised a big round of funding to expand its business. 
Storyblok, a startup out of Linz, Austria, that provides a content management system (CMS) for organizations built around the ‘headless’ concept, has closed a Series C round of $80 million. The startup targets the middle ground between platforms that offer rigid templates, and those that facilitate a full-control approach that might involve building and maintaining different components of a content and front-end tech stack. 
The startup plans to use the funds to continue expanding further into Europe and the U.S., and also to bring new automation and AI tooling into the mix. 
Some of that is already getting a boost: Alongside the funding announcement, Storyblok is launching the beta of Ideation Room. The company describes this as a “collaborative space within Storyblok where [users] can develop new ideas together at the beginning of the creation process, using AI to help improve content and bring it to life.”
Dominik Angerer, the CEO and founder of Storyblok, said that the company was working with OpenAI on that AI tooling, so expect to see some generative AI worked not only into making the platform more intuitive to use, but potentially also to populate the content on the platform. 
The company now has a staff of 240, and it will also be ramping up hiring.
Brighton Park Capital, a new investor in the company, is leading the Series C. This is a substantial raise for the startup, which last raised a $47 million Series B in 2022. As with that last round, it’s not disclosing its valuation, but it says its users have more than doubled since that last round to 200,000 from 74,000 in 2022, and we understand that this is definitely an “up round.”
Storyblok has raised $138 million to date.
Angerer told TechCrunch that he roughly expects the company to be profitable by the end of 2025. 
“It’s a massive market,” he said, estimating that the bigger opportunity for CMS players – which include others like Contentful, WordPress and Commercetools (focused on e-commerce) – is around $20 billion to $25 billion annually. “People used to think that content was valuable for B2C brands that were connected with their consumers, but increasingly, it’s core to the strategy for almost any company in any industry,” he said. “The mass market is still controlled by legacy companies, with modern headless players like us taking just a percentage.”
Storyblok’s big selling point is that its services are used not just by the developers — typically the end-customers of CMS services — but also by non-technical workers. Its customers include Adidas, T-Mobile, Renault, and the alt-milk brand, Oatly. Altogether, its platform hosts some 250,000 active projects.
Creators have long grappled with the challenges of building an audience, and thus a business, off the back of content. These days, that set of challenges has burgeoned into something of an existential crisis thanks to the rise of AI. There has always been something sacrosanct about what a human brings to the equation when it comes to creativity, but with the rise and increasing sophistication of generative AI, is the human really going to be needed tomorrow?
Storyblok has so far been focused on putting the human creator front and center. But in making its tools easier to use with AI, the big question will be what role those humans play in the longer run.
For now, it’s a big enough proposition to back companies that are using AI for more immediate help, said Kevin Magan of Brighton Park. “Almost all of our companies have AI as an important part of their product today or product roadmap,” he said. “We’re not focusing a huge amount of time on a lot of the foundational models and things like that, but we do feel strongly that AI is going to be a component of most application-level software.”
In addition to Brighton Park, previous backers HV Capital, Mubadala Capital, 3VC, and firstminute capital also participated in the Series C round.
Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.
Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.
The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Tuesday.
TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.
Try to imagine the number of parts that go into making a rocket engine. Now imagine requesting and comparing quotes for each of those parts, getting approvals to purchase the…
The Raspberry Pi 5, the small-but-mighty computer that has become quite popular with tech hobbyists and industrial companies, is now also an AI computer. The company just released the AI…
When Stacklet’s founders, Travis Stanfield and Kapil Thangavelu, came out of Capital One in 2020 to launch their startup, most companies weren’t all that concerned with constraining cloud costs. But…
Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake Service aims to remove the repetitive work of managing data lakes.
Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both spent decades in search discovery, but it was while working at Pinterest that they began trying to understand how to use search engines to…
GetWhy helps businesses carry out market studies and extract insights from video-based interviews using AI.
AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.
The startup targets the middle ground between platforms that offer rigid templates, and those that facilitate a full-control approach.
The startup has been pursuing a ground-up redesign of a well-understood technology.
Sékr, a startup that offers a mobile app for outdoor enthusiasts and campers, is launching a new AI tool for planning road trips. The new tool, called Copilot, is available…
OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been down for several users across the globe for the last few hours.
Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights non-profit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data…
Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get…
Featured Article
It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.
The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Unfortunately, Boeing’s Starliner launch was delayed yet again, this time due to issues with one of the three redundant computers used by United…
The court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.
Instagram Threads is rolling out the ability for users to signal which sort of posts they wanted to see more or less of by swiping.
The Japanese billionaire who commissioned SpaceX for a private mission around the moon on a Starship rocket has abruptly canceled the project, citing ongoing uncertainties around when the launch vehicle…
Malicious actors are abusing generative AI music tools to create homophobic, racist, and propagandic songs — and publishing guides instructing others how to do so. According to ActiveFence, a service…
As WWDC 2024 nears, all sorts of rumors and leaks have emerged about what iOS 18 and its AI-powered apps and features have in store.
Dallas is the second city that Cruise is easing its way back into after pulling its entire U.S. fleet late last year.
Featured Article
The company has been sued by at least seven creditors, including Wells Fargo.
Featured Article
The Ace are a contender in a crowded market, but they’re still in search of that magic bullet to truly let them stand out from the pack.
The change would see Instagram becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos.
Commerce platform Shopify has acquired Checkout Blocks, allowing Shopify Plus merchants to make no-code customizations in their checkout to enhance customer experience and potentially boost sales.  Checkout Blocks, which debuted…
After the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party app stores for iOS in Europe, several developers have launched alternative stores, like the AltStore and MacPaw’s Setapp (currently…
Time is relentless and, right now, it’s no friend to procrastination-prone early-stage startup founders. The application window for Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 slams shut in…
Cloudera, the once high-flying Hadoop startup, raised $1 billion and went public in 2018 before being acquired by private equity for $5.3 billion in 2021. Today, the company announced that…
Powered by WordPress VIP

source
Sponsor:News technical sponsor
Sponsor:News AI sponsor
Sponsor: AI sponsor
Sponsor: AI sponsor