In the frontier of generative AI, an unexpected maverick is making its presence felt. LimeWire, once notorious for music piracy and facing the ire of the music industry, ultimately closing its doors, underwent a transformation last year under new ownership, venturing into the realm of content creation.
To further expand its offerings, LimeWire is delighted to announce its latest acquisition of BlueWillow, a prominent generative AI image creation platform that competes directly with services such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.
Despite its recent establishment earlier this year, BlueWillow has rapidly gained popularity, capitalizing on the current surge in interest in generative AI. It has become a favored platform for creatives, especially on Discord, where its primary version is available for free. BlueWillow proudly claims the title of the second-largest AI image generation community on Discord, boasting a massive community of 2.5 million members and the creation of over 500 million images, with Midjourney leading as the largest.
The strategic vision involves maintaining BlueWillow’s presence on Discord while also integrating its capabilities into LimeWire’s website. This integration will contribute to LimeWire’s array of services, spanning both paid and ad-supported free tiers for creators. Furthermore, it will serve as a foundational element for LimeWire’s future developments in media services.
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The financial specifics of the deal remain undisclosed, but it’s worth noting that the acquisition will not encompass any of the talent currently employed at BlueWillow. Ritankar Das, the founder and leader of the company, shared in an interview that the team behind BlueWillow is presently advising LimeWire on the platform during a transitional phase. However, their long-term intention is to collectively depart and embark on a new stealthy AI venture.
For LimeWire, this acquisition highlights the company’s ongoing efforts to bolster its user community and revenue streams. Initially, when the startup relaunched, it focused on establishing an NFT marketplace for music creators. To achieve this, it successfully raised approximately $17.5 million through token sales, with notable investors including Arrington Capital (led by Mike Arrington, the founder and former editor of this site), Kraken, Crypto.com Capital, CMCC Global, Hivemind, Deadmau5, and others. Earlier this year, LimeWire was estimated to be valued at around $60 million.
However, as interest in NFTs has waned, LimeWire founders Paul and Julian Zehetmayr have diversified their focus toward building a platform for content creation and distribution, with NFTs taking on a more peripheral role rather than being at the core of their business.
Meanwhile, the company’s core business required additional tools. The company has assembled a team of engineers to develop subscription and other features for creatives. Nevertheless, when it came to AI-based image generation, LimeWire was dependent on third-party integrations. The acquisition of BlueWillow equips the Austrian Company with the capability to provide its own image generation tools and expand upon them. Future plans include incorporating video and audio generation capabilities as well.
