Black Forest Labs is a generative AI research lab focused on image and video models, best known for creating the FLUX family of text-to-image models. The company was founded in 2024 by Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Patrick Esser, former Stability AI researchers who previously helped develop Stable Diffusion, and is based in Freiburg, Germany.
The company raised a $300 million Series B in December 2025 at a $3.25 billion valuation, co-led by Salesforce Ventures and investor Anjney Midha, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, General Catalyst, and Temasek, bringing total funding to more than $450 million. As one of Europe's most closely watched AI labs, Black Forest Labs has positioned itself as a leading open-model alternative in generative visual AI.