Digital comics platform GlobalComix is making moves to increase its reach. Earlier this month, the company announced three new developments: The appointment of Henrik Rydberg as CEO, a $13 million funding round, and the acquisition of the AI-powered publishing platform Inkr.
In a release, the company said these moves aimed establishing GlobalComix "as the platform building the infrastructure for how comics and manga are translated, distributed, and experienced worldwide."
Rydberg has experience with digital platforms, having previously served on the founding team that built the 3D design app Tinkercad to acquisition by Autodesk. He spent the last five years developing startups for Fortune 500 companies.
"Comics are the origin of pop culture. The biggest movies, the most valuable IP, and the characters we love all started as comics," Rydberg said in a statement. "There is incredible value locked inside those pages, waiting to be liberated across languages and screen sizes, into pockets all around the world. That’s what we’re empowering publishers and creators to do."
GlobalComix wants to be a destination for both English-language comics and Japanese manga, and those audiences are reflected in its funding sources. The $13 million funding round was co-led by the SBI US Gateway Fund, an arm of Japan’s largest venture capital firm that invests in North American tech startups, and the U.S. venture investor Point72 Ventures. Additional investors include Scrum Ventures, Wise Ventures, Wicklow Capital, and Upside VC.
In a release, the company said its plan is to become “the Figma for comics,” referencing the famous collaborative design platform. Acquiring Inkr is part of that plan, since the its AI-assisted software offers tools for translation, text detection, image cleaning, and typesetting. GlobalComix described Inkr as "collaborative platform where publishers and creators can localize, transform, and distribute their IPs globally, with AI that puts creators at the center of every workflow."
"Great creative tools disappear behind the creator and amplify them," Ken Luong, the former CEO of Inkr and now head of A.I. engineering at GlobalComix, said in a statement. "Everything we build puts the creator’s judgment and vision at the center. Our opt-in AI can help with the heavy lifting so professionals can focus on what matters: the story and expression. Joining GlobalComix lets us bring that philosophy to a global stage."
