Fundraising Fox
Dragonfly Ai
6 known investors
Find your way into Dragonfly Ai
Sign up to see every warm intro you have to Dragonfly Ai
- Paths you didn't know you had: your email and LinkedIn already hold routes to the Dragonfly Ai team. We find them for you
- 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: the friend-of-a-friend routes that take hours to manually find through your inbox or LinkedIn
- Answers now, not in days: momentum is everything in a raise. Skip asking around whether someone knows someone
Days of research, done the moment you sign in, with every route ranked by how warm it is.
Dragonfly AI offers a creative insights platform that uses attention prediction and gaze-path analysis to forecast how visual assets and packaging will perform, with benchmarking, A/B testing, and real-time optimization recommendations. It serves consumer brands, retailers, and agencies looking to improve conversion rates at the digital shelf and across sales channels.
Also known as Dragonfly AI
Founders & leadership
Investors · 6
How we know: Guinness Ventures's portfolio page · the company's own site · research · dragonflyai.co · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the company's own site · Not right? Tell us
Also in the syndicate · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Dragonfly AI is a UK-based creative intelligence company that applies neuroscience-led predictive AI to test and optimize advertising, packaging and other visual creative before it goes live. Its platform predicts how creative assets will perform across channels and audiences, measuring attention and, with newer metrics, memory and emotion, so brands can judge likely performance rather than measure it after spend.
The core technology is a biologically inspired computational model of how the human eye decides what to look at first, developed in the neuroscience department at Queen Mary University of London by Professor Peter McOwan and Dr Hamit Soyel and originally created for robotics. The approach simulates visual biology directly rather than being trained on datasets, which the company positions as avoiding the bias inherent in data-trained generative models and removing the need for eye-tracking panels. The company states the model is validated at 91% relative accuracy against professional eye-tracking panels and that its technology is patented in the US and EU.
Products include Dragonfly AI Studio (with Studio 2.0, 2.11 and Studio 3 releases), a Copilot assistant, scene/context testing, a Chrome extension for real-time website attention heat mapping, a developer API, video analysis APIs, creative benchmarks for Amazon product imagery, and Dragonfly Connect for enterprise integrations.
Founding story
Co-founder and CEO Steve King, who studied cognitive science and previously co-founded Black Swan Data, encountered the underlying attention model at a Queen Mary University of London show-and-tell, where Professor Peter McOwan and Dr Hamit Soyel had built a computational model of visual attention for robotics. King built a business around the technology to address revenue lost to pack designs that fail to land their message, with scale testing against thousands of pack designs establishing the patterns behind the product.
Business model
Enterprise SaaS platform sold to brands and agencies, including an Enterprise Plan, with developer and video APIs and enterprise integrations (Dragonfly Connect) that embed the algorithms into customers' existing tools and workflows.
Subscription-style platform access with tiered plans including an Enterprise Plan, alongside API access for customers and partners integrating the capability into their own solutions.
Traction
The company reports use by more than 70 global brands, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Coca-Cola and L'Oréal, and states more than 50 global CPG businesses use the platform. Published case studies cover hero image optimization, packaging redesign (including Birds Eye), Beiersdorf Health Care, retail-tech agency Optopus and a global consumer healthcare company reporting 7% growth in a toothpaste line.
Latest developments
In January 2026 Dragonfly AI announced more than £5 million of new investment led by 24Haymarket with participation from Guinness Ventures, Foresight and others, and appointed Fiona Dent, previously in senior roles at Time Inc., to its board of directors. Proceeds are earmarked for new Emotion & Memory metrics, expanded video analysis, growth of Dragonfly Connect enterprise integrations, US sales and customer success hiring, and further research and product development. The company also launched scene testing in Studio 3.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Positions itself as a category-defining creative testing and creative intelligence platform differentiated from data-trained generative AI systems, with adoption by more than 70 global brands, including five of the world's ten largest FMCG suppliers.
Operates without training data, using a simulation of visual biology rather than a data-trained model, which the company says avoids inherited bias and removes dependence on eye-tracking labs; the underlying algorithm is patented in the US and EU and originated in university neuroscience research.
Technology
A patented, biologically inspired algorithm that mimics how the human brain processes visual stimuli, developed from Queen Mary University of London neuroscience research and operating without reliance on training data. It outputs predictive attention heat maps and performance breakdowns for images, video and in-context scenes, with newer Emotion & Memory metrics, and is delivered through Studio, Copilot, a Chrome extension and APIs.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales supported by demo requests on the company website, published case studies, partner integrations such as CreativeX, and an expanding US sales and customer success organization funded by the 2026 investment round.
Global brands and their marketing, creative, e-commerce and packaging teams, with particular concentration in CPG/FMCG, consumer healthcare and retail, plus agencies and retail-technology partners.
Geography
Headquartered in the United Kingdom with a global brand customer base and an expanding United States commercial presence in sales and customer success.
History
The technology was used in a mobile app by early customers such as GSK in 2018, and Dragonfly AI went to market in 2019. In 2020, Downing Ventures (later Foresight Ventures) invested, the team began to grow, a developer API was released and a Chrome extension for live attention heat mapping launched. Studio 2.0 followed in 2021. In 2022 the company raised a £3 million Series A backed by Guinness Ventures, appointed a new board chairman, and added video analysis via a video API plus creative benchmarks for Amazon product imagery. Contexts launched in 2023, Studio 2.11 in 2024, and Studio 3 with Copilot in 2025. In January 2026 the company announced more than £5 million of new investment led by 24Haymarket and appointed Fiona Dent to its board.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 12
launches, deals, and filingsThe company launched scene testing in Studio 3, allowing creative to be evaluated in environments such as retail shelves, in-store displays, outdoor placements and ecommerce storefronts.
Dragonfly AI announced new investment totaling more than £5 million, led by early-stage investor 24Haymarket with additional backing from Guinness Ventures, Foresight and others, to fund multi-year growth, global expansion and a larger US commercial presence.
Alongside the funding announcement, Dragonfly AI appointed Fiona Dent, who previously held senior global leadership roles including at Time Inc., to its board of directors.
Studio 3 and Copilot combined AI with actionable insights for analyzing and predicting creative asset performance.
Studio 2.11 added enhanced metrics and streamlined reporting functions for creative optimization.
Contexts enabled prediction of attention for visual assets in any environment as an out-of-the-box in-context testing capability.
The company raised a £3 million Series A supported by Guinness Ventures, funding expansion across marketing, product, customer success and finance, and appointed a new chairman of the board.
Dragonfly AI added video analysis through a video API and creative benchmarks for Amazon product imagery, bringing attention benchmarking to eCommerce teams.
Studio 2.0 introduced a new studio experience allowing brands to test multiple variants side by side with a new range of predictive attention reports.
Downing Ventures (later Foresight Ventures) invested in Dragonfly AI, after which the team began to scale.
A developer API was made available to let customers and partners integrate the capability into their own solutions, and a Chrome extension launched for real-time testing of any website with live attention heat mapping.
Following use of the mobile app by early customers such as GSK in 2018, Dragonfly AI officially launched, with focus shifting to live testing for the in-store shopping experience.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Dragonfly AI secures £5m new investment from 24Haymarket, Guinness Ventures and Foresightdragonflyai.co · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Dragonfly Ai do?
- UK creative intelligence company using a neuroscience-based algorithm to predict how consumers will respond to visual assets.
- Who founded Dragonfly Ai?
- Dragonfly Ai was founded by David Mitchell.
- Who are Dragonfly Ai's investors?
- Dragonfly Ai's investors include Guinness Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Committed Capital, The FSE Group, Foresight Canada.