People have vibe-coded apps for all kinds of tasks, from nutrition planning to babysitting gigs to grocery shopping. You may soon be able to code mood into your home’s design.
That’s the idea behind Drafted, a nine-month-old startup that uses AI to turn home design ideas into floor plans and 3D layouts. Founded by Nick Donahue, Drafted has raised $16 million in a seed round from investors including Buckley Ventures, Y Combinator, Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann, and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder. CEO Donahue declined to disclose the company’s valuation.
Instead of using expensive professional design software, users can enter details such as lot size, house size, number of rooms, etc. You can then describe the type of home you want and instantly generate floor plans and 3D renderings. Play around with your designs and get the latest plans in seconds.
“Today’s residential design requires working with fragmented tools and highly manual workflows,” says Donahue. “We’re building a system that makes shaping a home as easy as shaping software.”
Draft previously raised $1.65 million at a valuation of $35 million from investors including Patrick Collison and Jack Altman.
Donahue grew up around the home construction industry. His father built homes for a major development company, and his mother worked in East Coast sales for Home Depot.
Drafted isn’t his first attempt at making home design easier. Donahue previously ran Atmos, a startup that uses technology to streamline the design process for custom homes. The company has been running for seven years and has raised about $20 million from investors including Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Sam Altman. Donahue closed the business in early 2025 after high interest rates made it difficult for customers to buy the homes he spent months designing.
Donahue couldn’t stay away for long. This time, he built Drafted around AI.
“What I’ve never understood about Silicon Valley is who wants to design homes,” he said. “I said, ‘Okay, we might not build it here, but for most people, in most places, home is the most important thing, just like outside of the family.’
Donahue said 250,000 people have visited Drafted’s website since it launched five months ago, and users have created more than 300,000 floor plans in the past month. More than a third of the website’s visitors are home buyers, Donahue said. Other users include architects, builders, and developers.
The San Francisco-based startup is trying to find a middle ground between hiring an architect and buying stock house plans online. The first option can be expensive and time consuming. The second one is cheaper, but harder. Donahue said Drafted will be able to offer more customization at a lower price point, with a set of basic plans expected to cost around $1,000.
Architects and builders are already using tools like Autodesk, Planner 5D, and Homestyler. Donahue believes Drafted can provide a simpler starting point for both consumers and architects before projects move into more formal design work.
“We invested in Drafted because it sits at the intersection of huge consumer behaviors and very real needs,” said Josh Buckley, founder of Buckley Ventures and early investor in companies such as Applied Intuition, Physical Intelligence, and Figma. “People don’t just want beautiful AI images; they want to explore what their actual future home will look like, iterate on it, and ultimately make decisions based on it.”
Draft’s growth strategy is inspired by Donahue’s teenage years playing Minecraft. He spent hundreds of hours creating maps in creative mode, transforming empty spaces into Hunger Games-style arenas with mountains, forests, and villages. Before releasing the map, he invited YouTubers to play the game in a collaborative livestream to generate buzz.
He’s currently using a similar strategy to promote Drafted, recruiting about 20 creators a month to try out the product and share their experiences.
Donahue said the company plans to start charging for the basic plan set within the next three to six months.