Marker, a London-based startup building an AI-native word processor for writers, has raised £10 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from LocalGlobe. Angel backers include Writely co-founder Steve Newman, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson and Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf.
The product is designed to support writers through the messier, earlier stages of writing rather than generate finished copy for them. Its tools cover ideation, helping writers work out what they want to write; writing tools built to keep them in flow; revision support; and collaboration features that let writers bring in a co-writer or commenter. Early testers have used Marker to write blogs, Substacks, business papers, memos and novels, according to the startup.
Marker was co-founded by Jon Steinback, who previously led brand and creative at DeepMind, and Ryan Bowman, who has built platforms for writers at literary and talent agencies.
The launch comes amid growing concern about AI-generated "slop" online. Earlier this year, Synthesia chief executive Victor Riparbelli warned of an "AI-sloppification" of written content as more documents are produced by large language models.
We're in a moment where people get to choose the future of writing, and I believe they will choose something that values the craft, rather than the slop brutally eroding it.
Creative people deserve tools that understand their craft. Figma transformed how designers work together; Notion reimagined how teams organise ideas. But writing, the most universal creative act, got left behind, stuck between legacy word processors and automation tools. Marker offers a compelling new approach.
