Image-generation AI startup Reve (Reve) will shut down its flagship image-generation feature in return for securing new investment from OpenAI.

In an official announcement on Sept. 18, Reve said image generation on its website, reve.com, will no longer be available from 12 p.m. Pacific time on Sept. 27. New sign-ups and paid subscription applications were already suspended as of Sept. 17. Existing users can log in until Oct. 31 to download images they created. Paid subscribers who paid September fees will receive full refunds to their original payment method by mid-October.

Reve previously said on its official blog that it had secured investment from OpenAI. Following the deal, some members of Reve's AI research team moved to OpenAI to lead multimodal research. Reve will retain its status as an independent corporate entity, and it did not disclose the size of the investment.

Christian Cantrell (크리스천 캔트렐), Reve's co-founder and chief product officer, said he believes a tight coupling of product and research is key in creative software. He said the product studio decided to shift its focus from creative tools to other forms of AI-based workflows. Cantrell added that the product studio is already making progress toward the most innovative AI-based experience of his career, and he stressed he wants to show its next steps soon.

Cantrell previously served as chief product officer at Stability AI and, during his time at Adobe, led development of a 'Stable Diffusion' Photoshop plug-in. Reve unveiled its first product, 'Reve Image 1.0', in March last year, and it was assessed as outperforming competing models in text rendering and prompt comprehension. The company later released 'Reve 2.0' and 'Reve 2.1', which support 4K-resolution generation and editing, expanding its presence in the image-generation market.

With the decision, Reve appears set to end its creative image-generation business, which it has focused on since its founding, and to concentrate its capabilities on developing new AI workflow products using its collaboration with OpenAI as a foundation.