Artists now generate images, video, code, 3D, audio, and interactive systems across disconnected tools.
01Cover
Pre-Seed · Confidential · May 2026
ij8.ai
The studio-to-release platform for AI-native creative work.
Creation, learning, provenance, and distribution for the next generation of computational artists and educators.
02The category shift
The category shift
AI is turning creative software into creative infrastructure.
Schools need AI-native creative platforms that teach process, not just prompting.
Existing galleries and marketplaces are not built for AI-native authorship, provenance, and pedagogy.
03The ask
The ask
We are raising $1.5M to turn a working platform into the first institutional and cultural network for AI-native creative practice.
Launch 3–5 institutional pilots.
Onboard the inaugural artist and educator cohort.
Harden the platform for classroom, studio, and curated release workflows.
12-month goal Reach paid institutional pilots, first curated drops, measurable creator usage, and a repeatable revenue model.
04The problem
The problem
AI-native creative work is fragmented.
Creative tools stop at output files — no curation, provenance, or release.
Learning platforms are detached from real creative production.
Digital art platforms rarely integrate generation, education, provenance, and release.
05The solution
The solution
ij8 unifies Studio, Classroom, and Gallery into one creative stack.
Studio
Create images, video, 3D, code, audio, and interactive works.
Classroom
Teach AI-native creative coding, computation, and media literacy.
Gallery
Release, mint, exhibit, preserve, and distribute AI-native work.
Bottom line The same environment supports making, learning, publishing, and collecting.
06Differentiation
Why ij8 is different
ij8 is not another AI wrapper.
Built from 30 years of creative coding, computational art, and pedagogy.
Combines AI generation with code, interaction, education, and release infrastructure.
Designed for serious artists, educators, and institutions — not disposable content generation.
07Product proof
Product proof
The platform is already built and deployed.
Live platform with Studio, Classroom, Gallery, and blockchain / provenance infrastructure.
Supports AI media generation, creative coding, lesson scaffolding, and collection workflows.
Already entering real classroom and artist-onboarding use cases.
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08Beachhead market
Beachhead market
Initial wedge: AI-native creative education and serious creator cohorts.
High schools, universities, creative-technology programs, and executive education need structured AI literacy.
Artists and educators need tools that combine making, teaching, and publishing.
ij8 enters through trusted institutional and cultural networks, not anonymous consumer acquisition.
09Business model
Business model
Three revenue paths, one platform.
Institutional licensing
Schools, programs, workshops, and creative-AI curricula.
Creator & student subscriptions
Individual plans for artists, educators, students, and studios.
Curated release fees
Platform share from drops, editions, minting, and marketplace activity.
$5K per classLive pricing today — site & district licensing to follow.$20–60 / monthBenchmarked to Adobe, Midjourney, and Runway.10%Platform share on primary sales.
Land & expand Per-class pilots today, expanding into annual institutional licensing and subscription revenue.
10Market opportunity
Market opportunity
ij8 sits at the intersection of AI tools, creative education, and digital art distribution.
Beachhead. Creative-AI education programs and institutional pilots.
Expansion. Artists, creative coders, design schools, media programs, and studios.
Platform upside. AI-native creative provenance, exhibition, and distribution.
In the first 6–12 months, ij8 is not trying to capture the whole market. It is proving repeatable demand through institutions, artists, and curated releases.
11Founder credibility
Founder credibility
Built by one of the original figures in creative coding pedagogy.
Ira Greenberg: Processing / creative-coding lineage; professor and Director of SMU's Center of Creative Computation.
Longstanding work across code, art, AI, blockchain, and computational pedagogy.
Existing relationships across artists, educators, institutions, and digital-art communities.
Founder–market fit Artist supply, institutional distribution, and curriculum credibility in one person.
12Use of funds & milestones
Use of funds & milestones
$1.5M funds 12 months of focused execution.
Product engineering
Harden Studio, Classroom, and Gallery workflows.
Cloud, GPU & inference
Support classrooms, creators, and artist onboarding.
Design & UX
Onboarding, polish, and mobile responsiveness.
Sales & partnerships
Convert pilots and institutional relationships.
Artist & educator onboarding
Launch the inaugural cohort and case studies.
013–5 paid institutional pilots
0225–50 active educators and creators
03First curated artist releases
04Clear subscription and licensing pricing
05Mobile-responsive, production-grade platform
06Seed-ready traction story
13Appendix
Reference
Appendix
Supporting detail for diligence — pulled up on request, not part of the linear pitch: platform architecture and technical proof, the Studio / Gallery / Classroom product surfaces, founder lineage and team, the inaugural artist cohort and education footprint, defensibility and competitive landscape, and the detailed use-of-funds breakdown.
14Appendix · Architecture
Appendix · Architecture & technical proof
Shipped product, live environments, founder credentialing across the canon.
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- Live environments. Production studio, production gallery, staging, and a public pitch site are deployed behind Cloudflare/PM2 workflows.
- On-chain proof. Verified Sepolia V1: 0x92B1…1151e. V2, V3, and Factory implemented and passing tests.
- Founder drop history. EmProps The Oracles (genesis drop, 1,000 editions, 2022); BrainDrops Mappings (511 works, 2023); Bright Moments Horizon; Verse Ancient Automata, ProtoNematode.01; GAZELL.iO solo CyberStructures (London, 2023).
- Classroom use. Active use in SMU graduate teaching; high-school AI-literacy pilot planned for summer 2026.
- Hard engineering edges. Share-video AAC alignment; HunYuan3D dual-pass on 24 GB VRAM; SSE-streamed pipelines past Cloudflare timeout; HPC backend routing; ComfyUI reconciliation worker.
- Capital efficiency. Bootstrapped to live product, contracts, academic users, and a credible artist pipeline.
15Appendix · Product
Appendix · Product surfaces
One platform, three reinforcing surfaces.
Studio
Chat-and-canvas workspace across six creative modalities — image, video, 3D and rigging, audio, creative code (p5.js, three.js, GLSL, Tone.js), and App Lab. 20+ models in production rotation; 12+ ComfyUI workflows.
Gallery
Owns the release layer, not just a storefront. Four Solidity contracts (V1–V3 + Factory; ERC-721 + ERC-2981), IPFS via Pinata, 66 passing tests, V1 verified on Sepolia. 10% primary platform fee, 7.5% artist royalty target.
Classroom
AI-mediated computational literacy. Teachers author courses with AI scaffolding and syllabus ingestion; students build real software inside the studio canvas; Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite handles grading. Live in SMU graduate teaching.
Integration A student or artist can learn the method, generate in six modalities, curate a collection, and release with provenance — without changing tools.
16Appendix · Lineage & team
Appendix · Founder lineage & team
A direct line from Processing to ij8.
2001
Processing open-sourced.
Casey Reas + Ben Fry release Processing at the MIT Media Lab.
2007
First book.
Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art — the first book on the language, by Ira Greenberg.
2009 – 2013
NSF follow-ups.
Processing for Flash Developers; Processing 2 with Dianna Xu and Deepak Kumar, under NSF support.
2022
EmProps launches.
Co-founded with Emil and Sandy Corsillo. The Oracles — 1,000 long-form generative-AI editions.
2023
Drops across the canon.
Mappings (BrainDrops); Horizon (Bright Moments); CyberStructures solo, GAZELL.iO London.
2024
Verse.
Ancient Automata, ProtoNematode.01.
2026
ij8.ai.
The platform he wanted for his students, his studio practice, and the next generation of digital artists.
Ira Greenberg
Founder. Professor and Director, Center of Creative Computation (Meadows · Lyle), SMU. Co-founder, EmProps. Author of the first book on Processing (Apress, 2007). BFA Cornell, MFA Penn. NSF PI, 2009 – 2016.
John F. Simon, Jr.
Advisor. Software artist. Permanent collections: MoMA, Whitney, Guggenheim, SFMOMA, LACMA, Centre Pompidou. Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award. SVA MFA Computer Art.
Danielle King
Advisor. CFO + COO, ClubNFT and Right Click Save. Eight years at MoMA's Department of Painting and Sculpture. MBA, Yale. Curator of FEMGEN, Art Basel Miami.
Two advisory seats open — Curator and Director of Marketing, with warm conversations underway. Founder also established SMU's BA in Creative Computing and its online MA in Creative Technology (2023).
17Appendix · Cohort & education
Appendix · Inaugural cohort & education footprint
Warm artist supply, and an academic seedbed already in motion.
A co-founder of Processing. Centre Pompidou, V&A, Whitney, LACMA permanent collections. UCLA Design Media Arts.
A MoMA permanent-collection algorithmic artist. Lumen Prize winner. Work 3D-printed on the ISS.
A TIME100 AI honoree. Christie's "Augmented Intelligence" sale. Defining African voice in critical AI art.
An AI poet whose work ran on the MoMA Hyundai Card Digital Wall, 2025–2026. Times Square and Shibuya editions.
A Cooper Hewitt-collected creative coder. Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica. Generative drops on Art Blocks.
An audiovisual duo with two decades at MoMA, the New Museum, PS1, The Kitchen, FACT. Feral File and Art Blocks.
The defining figure of synthetic figurative AI portraiture. Right Click Save profiled. Verse and Kate Vass releases.
Used today in SMU graduate teaching. The founder directs SMU's Center of Creative Computation — a joint Meadows · Lyle appointment — and founded the BA in Creative Computing and the online MA in Creative Technology.
Summer 2026 pilot. A New Mexico early-college charter high school on the Santa Fe Community College campus; dual-credit with the Institute of American Indian Arts. ~250 students, majority-minority. First high-school AI-literacy partner.
18Appendix · Defensibility
Appendix · Defensibility & competitive landscape
The moat is taste, distribution, and integration — not model access.
Founder authoritycreative-computation lineage, Processing authorship, academic leadership, AI-art practice
Artist supplywarm access to canonical digital and AI artists, not cold marketplace acquisition
Classroom channelAI-mediated courses, cohorts, and institutional pilots create recurring use
Workflow depthmultimodal orchestration, ComfyUI/HPC operations, 3D/video/audio/code pipelines
Release railscontracts, IPFS, gallery, collector UX, and provenance in the same stack
Curation →↑ IntegrationOpenSea / BlurMagic EdenRaribleSuperRareFeral FileVerseArt BlocksManifold / HighlightZoraAdobe / Runway / KreaComfyUIDomestika / Courseraij8
Y: Integration (passive → integrated tool)X: Curation (broad → curated)
No incumbent owns all three surfaces — integrated studio, curated gallery, and classroom — in one product. That white space is ij8's wedge.
19Appendix · Detailed use of funds
Appendix · Detailed use of funds
$1.5M pre-seed on a SAFE. Founder bootstrapped to date.
01
Engineering + production risk controls
Cancelable jobs, observability, tests, CI gates, rate limiting, structured logging, signer abstraction, wallet-key hygiene, backup discipline, and dedicated GPU allocation for studio throughput and curated drops.
02
Four hires
Director of Marketing & Outreach. Senior Developer. Instructional Designer. Curator. Each role owns one load-bearing risk: demand, reliability, AI-mediated learning outcomes, and cultural credibility.
03
Cohort, drops, classroom expansion
Convert artist conversations into signed drop commitments. Run The Masters Program pilot. Formalize two to three additional institutional partners and package teacher tooling for repeatable deployment.
01Production readiness: Sentry, CI, rate limits, cancelable jobs, signer abstractionQ4 2026
02Tier 1: first three curated drops live on V3Q1 2027
03Three institutional pilots formalizedQ1 2027
04Tier 2: emerging-artist subscription launchedQ2 2027
Instrument: post-money SAFE. The use of funds is explicitly de-risking capital: close operational gaps before scale, convert warm artist and institutional demand into commitments, and turn ij8 from a bootstrapped product into a fundable category leader.