Arcade Pushes AI Design into Home Decor with New Agent and Luxury Makers
Arcade, the startup from Minted founder Mariam Naficy, just rolled out tools to design custom home decor like rugs, lampshades, and bedding using an AI chatbot named Maia. This marks their bigger move into home products beyond jewelry. The timing lines up with holiday shopping, as their announcement on Yahoo Finance puts it.
Maia: Chat Your Way to Custom Pieces
Maia works like a design helper in your chat window. Tell it what you want—"a chocolate brown pillow" or "a rug like Vanessa Bell’s style"—and it spits out options you can tweak and buy. Naficy told Business of Home this saves time over scrolling sites. If the AI misses, a human designer jumps in.
Examples from testing: a digitally printed pillowcase cover at $20, a Moroccan rug at $968. Bigger items like marble sinks need maker quotes. Arcade holds two patents on pricing from chat prompts, per Naficy.
New Home Decor Categories and Partners
Arcade now covers window treatments, table linens, ceramics, textiles, and more, all made on demand. They partner with luxury names that trained the AI on their designs:
- Christofle (French silverware)
- Cabana (home decor)
- Anastasio Home (stoneware)
- Salam Hello (Moroccan rugs)
- Crafted Glory (furniture)
- Jewelry: L&Co, Noemie
Makers get most of the revenue; Arcade takes a flat 20%. Artists whose styles feed the AI earn more than the usual 5-6% royalty if used.
Tastemaker Starting Points
To beat blank-page paralysis, Arcade loaded the site with editable designs from insiders like interior designer Brigette Romanek, chef Flynn McGarry, comedian Dan Rosen (Bloomsbury-inspired textiles), Kathy Kuo, and Karlie Kloss. Remix a Romanek rug in your colors.
Road to Launch and Funding
Arcade started beta last fall with jewelry, went offline to fix prompting issues, relaunched in March with home goods, and now adds Maia. They’ve raised $42 million from Reid Hoffman, Kirsten Green at Forerunner Ventures, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, plus angels like Elad Gil, Ev Williams, and Kelly Wearstler.
Some pushback exists, Dan Rosen’s Instagram collab got snarky comments calling it “AI slop,” but he and artists like the revenue and safeguards against copying. Head to arcade.ai now; holiday orders need to hit by December 10.