tldraw raises $10M to build the infinite canvas for developers

Hey, this is Steve from tldraw. Today I'm excited to share that tldraw has raised a $10M Series A led by Lux Capital and Definition. This round follows our first year of sales, which generated $1M in revenue through license deals with ClickUp, Autodesk, Padlet, and more, and will fuel our next chapter as we build the infinite canvas tools for developers.

What is tldraw?

If you’re new to tldraw, hello, we make an infinite canvas SDK. The tldraw SDK provides a full suite of tools to build a web-based whiteboard, extend it with custom elements and interactions, and deploy a multiplayer backend. You can read our code on GitHub and get involved on our Discord.

Grant Kot's Liquid Layers combines a liquid simulation with tldraw's canvas.

Our SDK powers our free whiteboarding app at tldraw.com. It also powers ClickUp's Whiteboards, Padlet's Sandboxes, Jam's screenshot annotations, boards in Autodesk's Forma, internal tools at Mobbin, and hundreds of other products, experiments, and research projects. Read more in our case studies.

In addition to the tldraw SDK, we also make demos and tweets. You might have seen our earlier AI projects like Make Real, our 2023 vibe drawing app, and most recently tldraw.computer, our recent collaboration with Google Deepmind.

Our tldraw.computer collaboration with Google Deepmind.

The story so far

Back in 2021, tldraw started as an open source side project that grew out of my earlier work on digital ink. The project got popular—and then more popular—especially with developers who were racing to build with the SDK. Everyone told me the same story: they had ideas for a canvas feature but didn't have the time, resources, or expertise to build its bones. They liked tldraw's bones.

I went out pitching tldraw as a solution the problem that a good canvas is hard to build and impossible to find. Products like Figma, Miro, and Canva were establishing the canvas as a place to do work. These apps were just too popular not to inspire new products. We could be "Mapbox for Figma for X", providing the canvas as a commodity at a level of quality far beyond what an unspecialized product team could deliver, and make these products possible.

ClickUp refreshed their whiteboard with tldraw's SDK.

That's still our direction. The SDK has become excellent. We've helped hundreds of companies prototype, develop, and ship the high-quality canvas experiences on the web. Our community has grown to over 67,000 followers on Twitter and 8,000 members on Discord. And our team has grown to nearly twenty people across London, Europe, and the United States.

Padlet's Sandboxes are built with the tldraw SDK.

We’ve made money, too. In our first year of business, we’ve closed just under $1M in license deals. Incredible products like ClickUp, Padlet, Autodesk Forma, Craft Docs, and Jam have built features with the tldraw SDK. New startups like Decode, Graze.social, and Alai were based on tldraw from day one. Timelines overflow with viral tldraw projects like Grant Kot's Liquid Layers or Vibe Draw that take the canvas in entirely new directions.

What's next

Now that we have a stable and fast engine to work with, we'll be working to make it easier to get started and to be successful with the SDK. We're planning new modules, such as integrations with LLMs, as well as building better support for complex applications and use-cases beyond whiteboarding.

Work in progress: right angle arrows.

We’re growing our team, too. If you’re an engineer, designer, or product thinker who’s excited by multiplayer collaboration, creative tools, and the power of a web-native canvas, we want to hear from you. See our jobs board at tldraw.dev/jobs or reach out directly to hello@tldraw.com.

To learn more about tldraw or get started, visit tldraw.dev. If you need a very good free whiteboard, check out tldraw.com. To chat with the team, visit us on Discord or reach out on Twitter/X, Bluesky, or LinkedIn.

To all of the friends of this project, a sincere thank you for getting us here. More to come.

— Steve Ruiz, Founder & CEO