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A London-based startup behind an AI writing product, co-founded by an ex-DeepMind creative lead, has emerged from stealth with a $13m seed funding round. Called Marker, the funding round was led by Index Ventures with participation from LocalGlobe.
Angel investors include Steve Newman, the co-founder of Writely, acquired by Google which became Google Docs, Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack, and Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf. Marker is billing itself as a “reimagined word processor”, which is built to support writers, leveraging AI tools that write with the writer, not for the writer. It says it’s designed for the process of writing- such as the rough drafts and the half-formed thoughts.
Some of its key features include ideation (helping writers figure out what they want to write), writing tools (designed to help users write and keep them in the flow), revision (supporting writers while they work through revision) and collaboration (writers can add a co-writer or commenter).
Early testers of Marker have used it to write blogs, Substacks, business papers, memos and novels, the startup says.
It comes amid heightened concern about AI slop. Earlier this year, Victor Riparbelli, the CEO of London AI startup Synthesia, warned against “AI-sloppification” after an increase in documents written by large language models.
Its co-founders are Jon Steinback, ex-DeepMind, where he led brand and creative, and Ryan Bowman, who builds platforms for writers inside literary and talent agencies.
Steinback, CEO, said: “We’re in a moment where people get to choose the future of writing, and I believe they will choose something that values the craft, rather than the slop brutally eroding it.”
Georgia Stevenson, partner at Index Ventures, said: “Creative people deserve tools that understand their craft. Figma transformed how designers work together; Notion reimagined how teams organise ideas. But writing—the most universal creative act—got left behind, stuck between legacy word processors and automation tools. Marker offers a compelling new approach.”