Why We Invested in ComfyUI: Creativity Thrives in Open Systems

When we first met the ComfyUI team, what stood out wasn’t a glossy pitch deck or a polished “vision slide.” It was obsession.

What started in October 2022 as one developer’s late-night experiments with Stable Diffusion—tweaking workflows to render fennec-eared characters—has since become one of the most important open-source platforms in creative AI. Today, ComfyUI is powering millions of workflows across images, video, 3D, and audio. Their GitHub has rocketed past 88,000 stars, making it one of the fastest-growing open-source repositories in AI.

The growth wasn’t engineered. It was organic, community-driven, and global. In diligence, we spoke with dozens of AI creative tool builders and struggled to find any that weren’t built on Comfy. That’s product-market fit and community love at its purest.

Why This Matters

At Chemistry, we believe the future of creative AI can’t be locked away behind proprietary APIs or fleeting SaaS wrappers. Creativity thrives in open systems. ComfyUI represents that ethos:

• Open Source First. Anyone can run Comfy locally, fully on their own terms. For those who prefer the cloud, Comfy Cloud makes spinning up a hosted instance just a few clicks away.
• Extensible by Design. Its custom node ecosystem lets developers and artists shape the tool to their imagination.
• Community at the Core. Comfy didn’t begin with a go-to-market plan. It began as a playground and the community made it indispensable.

Why Now

Generative AI is evolving at breakneck speed, and the creative stack is at risk of being captured by closed, walled-off incumbents. ComfyUI is charting the opposite path: building an open operating system for creative AI that is flexible, modifiable, and durable enough to last for decades.

With new funding, the team is doubling down on:

• Scaling and stabilizing the custom node ecosystem
• Delivering a refined, intuitive UI
• Expanding Comfy Cloud to make powerful workflows accessible without heavy local compute
• Staying on the bleeding edge of every new model that emerges

ComfyUI isn’t just software—it’s infrastructure for creativity. We’re thrilled to partner with the team to help ensure that the future of creative AI remains open, extensible, and in the hands of creators everywhere.

We believe Comfy represents one of the most exciting opportunities to shape the future of creative AI and the Comfy team has an obsession with empowering creatives that brings purpose and responsibility to their work. For those with a similar ethos, the team is hiring builders who share their passion for an open, powerful future—see open roles here.