Canva alumni founded Clove, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recipe platform, has cooked up $4.15 million in a seed funding round.

The round was led by Blackbird Ventures and saw participation from investors such as SHAKTI, along with executives and founders from Canva, Pexels, and Google Maps.

Clove aims to simplify cooking decisions for millions of people worldwide. The platform utilises AI to enable users to browse personalised recipes and streamline cooking workflows. Recipe creators are given the opportunity to publish simple, high-quality video and text recipes with a global reach on the platform.

Clove co-founder and CEO, Anna Guerrero, expressed her excitement about the platform's potential.

"Cooking is one of the few things we all need to do, but few of us are taught to do it well. Rather than spending hours scrolling through recipes or figuring out how to make the most of what’s in your fridge, we’re incredibly excited to make cooking something millions of people feel confident about and look forward to," she said.

Sam Killin, the other co-founder, highlighted the challenges that recipe creators face with current publishing tools.

"Many of the challenges with recipes today are directly related to the tools that creators have available to publish recipes, like blogs. They’re expensive, hard to use and require creators to work very hard to get discovered, which results in a poor experience for creators and home cooks alike," he explained. "“We’re excited about the technology that’s available to make both publishing and finding recipes effortless, and we’re looking forward to making it available."

The seed funding will be channelled towards accelerating the company's upcoming beta launch and expanding its team, which already boasts engineers and designers from Amazon Groceries and Milkrun.

Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak praised the Clove founders, saying, Anna and Sam bring a unique combination of well-honed creative thinking, skill and ambition to Clove.

"They both have a deep understanding of what it takes to build a generational company with community at the heart, and we are proud and excited to back them," she said.

Clove is currently accepting pre-registrations for users and creators.