Jerusalem-based Lightricks, which makes 11 subscription photo and editing apps, including Facetune, raises $130M Series D at a $1.8B valuation
Ricky Ben-David / The Times of Israel :
Context & Ripple Effects
Lightricks has been scaling a portfolio rather than a single hit: after a $60M round in 2018 timed to Enlight Pixaloop reaching 200,000 subscribers, it raised a Goldman Sachs-led $135M Series C at a $1B post-money valuation in 2019. This Series D lifts that to $1.8B across eleven subscription apps headlined by Facetune.
What makes the round worth tracking is where the money went: by early 2026 the company had split its consumer app unit from its GenAI unit LTX explicitly to capture AI growth, meaning the Series D capital was effectively pre-funding a model-research business built on top of a subscription cash machine.
First-order effects
- Goldman Sachs and the Series C syndicate see their position nearly double on paper within two years, while the new $130M gives management room to fund both the eleven-app subscription base and model development without near-term revenue pressure.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in selfie editing and mobile creative tools now face a competitor with an $80M+ war chest per round, forcing them to either match the raise cadence or differentiate on price in subscription tiers.
- Lightricks' move into training its own video model puts it in the same licensed-content-for-AI market as players like Bria, which raised $40M to license imagery from Getty and 30+ partners — competition for training data and licensing partners intensifies.
Third-order effects
- The eventual consumer/LTX split shows the structural endgame this round points toward: consumer app portfolios run as cash-generating distribution layers while foundation-model research is ring-fenced with separate economics — and if that template holds, more subscription-app companies will convert steady subscriber revenue into proprietary model bets rather than sell to acquirers.
The trend: Subscription consumer creative apps are evolving from portfolio businesses into funding engines for in-house generative AI models, with corporate splits formalizing the divide between distribution and research.