Affinity Labs raises $2M to co-found AI software brands with content creators

Affinity Labs (London) has closed a $2 million pre-seed (approximately €1.85 million), led by Fuel Ventures with Antler co-investing. The syndicate includes angels from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Playfair Capital, creator Marcello Ascani, and Devran Amaratunga Karaca (CEO, Kyra). A £497,787 non-dilutive Innovate UK grant is included in the headline figure; the equity component is smaller. Founded by Edoardo Ricci (CEO), Ahmed Eltom (COO), and Sunny Panchal (CTO). Antler has now backed six companies in the ProYarn archive, having previously appeared across enterprise software, healthtech, and climate rounds.

The co-founding model

Most creator merchandise and software plays share the same architecture: a creator lends their name and audience to a product built entirely by a studio, which retains no stake once the deal is done. Affinity Labs inverts this. The company identifies software concepts suited to a creator's specific audience, builds the product using AI-assisted tooling, and then co-founds and operates the resulting brand as an ongoing equity partner — not a contractor.

Four brands have launched. Interior Design Clinic — co-founded with UK creator Olivia Bowen — reached #34 in the App Store Lifestyle category. Archives — with creator Basel Ghazoghli — crossed 75,000 users and sits in the top 200 Education apps. The product lifecycle (concept identification, build, distribution, growth operations) runs on AI infrastructure that the founders say allows rapid iteration across categories without dedicated teams for each brand.

What the round builds toward

Proceeds cover portfolio expansion — more brands, more creator partnerships — and team hires across product management, growth, and engineering. The US market is the stated Q4 2026 priority. The Innovate UK grant signals that UKRI reviewers assessed the AI-assisted co-founding workflow as a genuine technical advance, not simply a marketing repackaging of standard app development.

Repeatability

Two products with documented traction is a proof of concept. The model becomes a business when the pipeline runs at volume — ten brands, not two — across categories and creator types that are less obviously matched. The US expansion is the first real test of whether the playbook is transferable: different creator ecosystems, more aggressive competitive landscape, higher customer acquisition costs.