Marker Raises $13 Mn in Seed Round led by Index Ventures

The startup was co-founded by a former DeepMind creative lead. It also received support from well-known angel investors, including Steve Newman, co-founder of Writely (later became Google Docs), Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack, and Thomas Wolf from Hugging Face.

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Marker describes its product as a new type of word processor that uses AI to help people write. Instead of writing content for users, the AI works alongside them by supporting ideas, rough drafts, and unfinished thoughts throughout the writing process.

Marker offers several AI features to make writing easier. It helps users come up with ideas, write more smoothly, improve and edit their drafts, and work with others by allowing co-writers and commenters to collaborate on documents.

According to the company, early users have used Marker to create blog posts, Substack newsletters, business documents, memos, and even novels.

The launch comes at a time when many people are worried about the growing amount of low-quality content created by AI. Earlier this year, Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli warned about "AI-sloppification," referring to the rise of documents generated by AI with little human input.

Marker was founded by Jon Steinback, a former DeepMind creative leader, and Ryan Bowman, who has experience building writing platforms for literary and talent agencies. Together, they aim to create AI tools that help people write better instead of replacing them.

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."