Freepik has rebranded itself as Magnific. The Malaga company, founded in 2010 as a search engine for graphic resources, has decided to adopt the name of the Murcian startup that it acquired in May 2024 and reorganize its entire generative AI offering for creatives under that brand.
The move comes accompanied by figures that explain why it is worth taking the step: $200 million in annual recurring revenue, more than one million paying subscribers and 250 business teams using the platform, including those from BBC, DeliveryHero, Huel, R/GA, Damm and Job&Talent.
Why is it important. Few European companies can stand up to the wave of American creative platforms (such as Midjourney, Runway or Leonardo) without having raised a single round of venture capital in the United States. Freepik, now Magnific, is one of them.
And it is doing it from Malaga, with a different model from the rest: instead of competing for the best image or video model, it aggregates the leading models on the market and integrates them into a single professional production environment. It is a commitment to being the layer that unites, not the one that generates.
The context. It is worth remembering where this story comes from. Freepik had been there for years stealthily becoming one of the most relevant players in the global graphics sector: in 2020 EQT bought the business in one of the largest Spanish technological operations, and since then the company has chained acquisitions (Iconfinder, Videvo, EyeEm…) and a turn towards generative AI.
The purchase of Magnific in May 2024 It was the turning point. Magnific was then a five-month-old startup founded by Javi López and Emilio Nicolás that had popularized the concept of reimagined upscaling: enlarge images generating new details in the process. The operation was carried out without the two brands merging. Until today.
Magnific Spaces interface. Image provided.
Between the lines. That the resulting company adopts the name of the acquired company and not that of the parent company says something: Freepik clearly carried a perception of a bank of images of stocksa business perceived as conservative and little linked to AI, to novelty. Magnific, on the other hand, had less of a brand, but was synonymous with cutting-edge AI and a tool admired by the international creative community, even commented by Elon Musk a few weeks after its launch.
Adopting the Magnific name is, above all, a positioning move: the company does not want to continue to be associated with vectors and templates, but with AI-assisted audiovisual production. It’s a rebranding to where the future money is, not where your legacy is.
In figures. The data that the company has shared outlines an unusual trajectory in European AI:
- $200 million ARR (annual recurring sales).
- 1 million paying subscribers.
- 100 million monthly visits.
- 175 million images and videos generated per month.
- 250 business teams in production.
- 2,000 subscriptions to the Business plan in its first six weeks, with a current rate of 150 new devices per week.
Andreessen Horowitz ranks it as the largest European generative AI web company by number of users.
In detail. What is offered under the Magnific umbrella covers the complete visual production cycle: 4K image and video generation with audio, upscaling own, collaborative space in real time (Spaces), 3D environments, multilingual lip sync (Speak), speech synthesis, sound effects, and a legacy library of 250 million assets.
The business promise is not to have the best model in a category, but rather that a creative team can do all the work without jumping between five different tools. He’s not doing bad at all with that proposal. And now, with the unified brand and the financial muscle to accelerate, it is time to convince the market that this promise also applies to the giants that come after it.
Featured image | Magnificent
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