companies

Black Forest Labs

German AI startup founded by former Stable Diffusion researchers, creators of the FLUX family of text-to-image and video generation models.

Black Forest Labs was founded in 2024 in Freiburg, Germany, by Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser, and Dominik Lorenz, researchers who previously developed latent diffusion techniques and the original Stable Diffusion model at LMU Munich, Heidelberg University, and Stability AI. The company's flagship product is the FLUX family of text-to-image models, along with subsequent video generation models, positioned as high-performance, licensable alternatives to other closed and open generative image systems. Black Forest Labs raised a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz shortly after its 2024 founding, followed by a $300 million Series B round in December 2025 co-led by Salesforce Ventures and Anjney Midha at a $3.25 billion valuation, with participation from Nvidia, General Catalyst, and Temasek; the company also signed a multi-year licensing deal with Meta worth roughly $140 million in 2025. Robin Rombach serves as CEO. The company maintains offices in Freiburg, Germany, and San Francisco, California, and had grown to roughly 100 employees as of 2026.

Founded

2024

Headquarters

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Sector

lab