Synopsis
San Francisco-headquartered startup Noon has emerged from stealth mode with $44 million in funding from Chemistry, First Round Capital, Scribble Ventures, Elevation Capital, and Afore Capital, along with individual investors from the technology and design industries.Founded in October 2024 by IIT Guwahati alumni Aditya Bandi and Kushagra Sinha, Noon is an AI-native tool that aims to bridge the gap between product design and engineering.
Sinha told ET during an interaction that most design tools in use today have trickled down from the world of graphic design software, and produce static visual mockups. "Designers work in a different universe. They create something and pass it to engineers, who interpret and rebuild it in code. In that translation, something is always lost," he said.
Hence, along with the illustrations of components, Noon also pulls code directly from a team's codebase and design system. As a result, the company says that what a designer produces is what ultimately ships, eliminating the traditional handoff between design and engineering.
AI is embedded throughout the tool to handle repetitive tasks while keeping designers in creative control.
The funding will be used for product development, sales and marketing, and to hire more talent. The startup did not disclose the valuation at which funds were raised.
Noon’s Bengaluru team has engineers and operators who were formerly with Google, Vercel, Ramp, Slack, Uber, and others. The India team has all roles including sales, product, and research.
"India has a massive talent pool, and we set up a base here for the same reason that the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are opening offices here: the talent," Sinha said.
He explained that Noon addresses the concern that AI-driven software sidelines design altogether, producing functional but generic products.
He added that demand for such a product was felt across sectors, and despite being headquartered in north America, Noon's go-to-market strategy is global. The tool will open up for all customers soon.
The individual investors in this round includes heads of design from Stripe, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft AI, as well as the cofounders of Dropbox, Ramp, Clay, and the former VP of Design at Meta.
"The problem statement is bigger than what it appears. That's the reason for the backing we have got from seniors in the industry. It's not the first time someone has tried to solve this, but the synergy of these two concepts, code and product design, is very important for quality software," Sinha explained.
Both Sinha and Bandi are second-time founders. Sinha's first startup was acquired by SoftBank-backed Whatfix, and Bandi's previous company was bought by Yahoo.
