Fashion AI Startup Artiso Raises $3.4m Pre-Seed to Build Industry 'Operating System'

Fashion software startup Artiso has raised more than $3.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Criteria Venture Tech, a substantial early cheque for a company founded only in July 2025.

Swanlaab Venture Factory and Bynd Venture Capital joined the round. Angel investors included David Tomás, co-founder of Cyberclick, and Nicolaj Reffstrup, founder and former chief executive of Danish fashion house GANNI, who invested through Look Up Ventures.

Reffstrup's participation carries weight: he ran GANNI through its rise to international prominence, and his backing signals that Artiso is pitching itself to people who have operated inside fashion businesses rather than to generalist tech money.

What does Artiso actually sell?

The company builds software that consolidates fashion design and production workflows. Those tasks today sit scattered across separate product lifecycle management systems, design software, image-generation tools, shared drives, spreadsheets and email.

Artiso's platform uses AI agents to support work from initial inspiration and moodboards through design, product development and marketing. Its toolset covers flat-sketch development, tech-pack creation, virtual models, on-model imagery, packshots and campaign assets.

The headline claim is speed. Artiso said a complete tech pack can be produced in about four minutes on its platform, against two to six hours through existing processes. That is a claimed reduction of roughly 97 percent, and it is the company's own figure, not an independent benchmark. Buyers will want to test it on real collections before accepting it at face value.

The software also includes a brand archive that retains information on previous products, bestsellers, seasonal direction and visual identity. Artiso uses this data to tailor outputs to individual brands and to give creative, product development, merchandising and marketing teams access to the same system. In plain terms: the platform's value grows with what a brand feeds into it, which raises the usual questions about data lock-in for clients.

Why the founders say they built it

"I spent years leading creative teams that had to orchestrate every step of a collection across tools that never spoke to each other," said Artiso co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sarah Iglesias Hiller.

"So we built the operating system we always needed: one that knows each brand's archive, its customers and its taste, and that is already running inside fashion companies today. AI is changing how every collection is imagined, made and shown, and with Artiso, creativity, not complexity, defines fashion's next era."

Hiller's phrasing — "already running inside fashion companies today" — is a claim about live deployments, though the company did not disclose client names or contract values. The absence of named customers is notable for a startup asserting enterprise traction.

Where the money goes

Artiso said the funding will support further development of its operating system, team expansion and enterprise roll-outs. It plans to hire across fashion and technology, including garment technology, pattern making, design, art direction, motion and data science.

That hiring list is unusually heavy on fashion craft roles for a software company. It suggests Artiso intends to build domain expertise in-house rather than rely purely on generic AI tooling — a hedge against the criticism that AI-generated design output lacks garment-level realism.

The company works with mid-sized and enterprise fashion brands, retailers and manufacturers across Europe, North America and Asia. It has identified the US as its priority market as it moves from initial development toward broader commercial deployment.

What to watch next

A pre-seed round buys runway, not proof. Artiso has staked its pitch on a quantified efficiency claim — four minutes versus hours per tech pack — and on unnamed enterprise clients. The test over the next 12 months will be whether US brands sign on at prices that justify the "operating system" framing, or whether Artiso remains a point tool in a crowded AI design field.

By Olivia Hart