The ongoing AI trend is fueling a growing interest in AI-generated “virtual influencers” across different social media platforms. Companies are increasingly directing their investments toward the emerging “digital human economy,” a market that Gartner predicts will reach $125 billion by 2035.
Leveraging AI-driven image generators such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, entire social media profiles of non-existent internet personalities are now being crafted as advanced marketing assets.
One noteworthy company, known as 1337 (pronounced as “Leet”), is harnessing generative AI technology to cultivate a community of AI-driven micro-influencers known as ‘Entities.’ These micro-influencers are smaller content creators with highly personalised interests and diverse backgrounds, seeking connections within niche communities such as gardening, emo music, vintage fashion, classical literature, and more.
$4 million funding
Named after a popular term from 1980s gaming and hacker culture, the New York-based startup has stepped out of stealth mode with $4 million in funding. Investors include Credo Ventures, GFR Fund, Treble Capital, Roosh Ventures, and individuals including Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue and impact investor Natalia Vodianova.
What sets 1337 apart is its approach: in addition to using AI for influencer creation, the platform also allows users to suggest the actions and dialogue of these virtual influencers. Each Entity has a unique set of skills and interests and aims to connect, educate and inspire niche communities online. The startup has already debuted 50 new Entities in beta, and a global creator community for co-creating future Entities.
1337 plans to use the new funding to develop a scalable platform that will facilitate the expansion of its Entity ecosystem to thousands of niche communities in the near future, while also broadening its global creator community.
“Niche communities collectively represent a massive audience of people online,” said 1337 co-founder and CEO Jenny Dearing. “1337 is building a new way for these deeply engaged community members to collaborate and interact with each other thanks to the addition of multimodal large language models. We view the Entities we’re creating as guides, to help facilitate greater connection between people and communities, and later, directly between communities and brands.”
The 1337 leadership team includes Jenny Dearing, Robin Raszka, Jan Maly and key strategic advisors including Bailey Richardson, former Head of Community at Instagram, who currently leads both Marketing and Community at Substack.
1337 founder Robin Raszka previously founded Alter, a consumer AI startup that he created in 2017 with a $3 million seed round and sold to Google in 2022 for $100 million. Before Alter, he was a product designer at AI startup Summly, which was acquired by Yahoo for $30 million in 2013.
“In the future of social media, we’ll witness a shift towards hyper-personalization and the co-creation of synthetic content—inspired by open-source principles—simulating the digital pulse of these AI Entities with the human soul. 1337 Entities are pioneering this shift,” said 1337 founder Robin Raszka. “We are inventing ways people engage with AI, creators, and brands, for good.”
“Today, some of the most dynamic applications of LLMs and diffusion models are found within the realms of human creativity and connectivity. This supports our conviction that the next wave of AI will have a significant impact on the social media landscape, affecting creators, followers, and advertisers alike,” said General Partner at Credo Ventures and Investor, Karolina Mrozkova. “We’re very excited to support Robin, Jenny, Jan, and the entire 1337 team on their mission to revolutionise content creation and connectivity in the world of social media and beyond.”
