What is Civitai?
Civitai, founded in 2022 by Justin Maier, is the largest community platform for open-source generative AI art. It began as a repository for Stable Diffusion model checkpoints and LoRA fine-tunes and grew into a full creative hub where millions of users discover models, share generated images and videos, publish articles, and run challenges. An on-site generator lets members create images directly from hosted models without local hardware, and the core platform code is open source on GitHub.
Community and marketplace
Civitai reached 100,000 users within months of launch and became the default distribution layer for the open-model ecosystem, with leaderboards, creator monetization programs, and bounties. A credit system called Buzz powers generation and rewards model creators, while paid memberships lift limits and add features.
Funding
In November 2023 Civitai announced a $5.1M seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a reported $20M valuation, cementing its position as core infrastructure for open generative media, though its permissive content policies have also drawn scrutiny.