Magnific AI co-founder predicts the rise of “one-person unicorns” propelled by AI after exit
Magnific AI, a Spanish startup that developed an AI-powered image upscaling service, has been acquired by graphics platform Freepik just five months after its official launch, the company’s founders announced.
The startup has amassed an impressive 725,000 registered users in just five months. What’s remarkable is that the two-man team, Emilio Nicolás and Javi Lopez, was able to attract this user base without spending any money on advertising, aside from the time Lopez spent on the company’s Twitter channel.
“All the launch and marketing strategy boils down to: ‘Spend a year talking about AI without realizing you’re building a channel, then hand out tokens freely to creators to spread the word of your tool'”, Lopez writes in an email to Magnific users.
About half of Magnific’s code was written using GPT-4, making Magnific AI an AI tool built with AI, Lopez says. He sees this as a “paradigm shift” from a lean startup model to an AI startup model.
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“We believe that soon we will see ‘one-person unicorns’ propelled by AI,” Lopez writes, adding that Magnific AI could be the fastest purely bootstrapped company ever in terms of growth and acquisitions, “certainly in Spain, likely in EU, and maybe even in the USA.”
With the resources of Freepik, which says it has 600 employees, 700,000 active subscribers and generates five million AI images a day, Magnific plans to accelerate its growth. The founders will remain with the company.
To celebrate the acquisition, Magnific is giving away $1 million in GPU resource vouchers to existing customers: Active subscribers will receive a free month, former subscribers will receive a $500 voucher, and registered users will receive $60. New customers can get 50% off their first month until Sunday, May 12.
