# Coco Mao

> Coco Mao is the CEO and co-founder of OpenArt AI, the creative platform that grew from a viral Hacker News post about AI image prompts to $70M+ ARR with just 20 people. A Carnegie Mellon computer scientist who spent seven years at Google building search products and the Tangi short-form video app, she left in 2022 to co-found OpenArt with CTO John Qiao. Under her leadership, OpenArt scaled 7x in 2025, reached 8 million monthly active users, raised a $30M Series A from Canaan Partners, and launched One-Click Story — a feature that lets anyone turn a single sentence into a complete video with persistent characters.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-Founder at OpenArt AI
- **Organizations:** OpenArt AI, Google, Google Area 120 (Tangi)
- **From:** Shanghai, China
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, Computer Science (minor: Mathematics), Carnegie Mellon University, Computer Science (exchange/studies), Jacobs University Bremen
- **Known for:** Scaled OpenArt from $1M to $10M ARR in 12 months, Grew revenue 7x in 2025, from $10.5M to $70M+ ARR with ~20-person team, Reached 8 million monthly active users

## Career timeline

- **2013** — Developed trading apps (internship/early career)
- **2014** — Created a new feature for LinkedIn's homepage as software engineering intern
- **2015** — Graduated Carnegie Mellon; joined Google as iOS Software Engineer
- **2015-2017** — iOS Software Engineer at Google Photos
- **2017-2019** — Senior Software Engineer at Google, improving Google Photos with machine intelligence
- **2019-2021** — Product Manager/Lead at Tangi (Google Area 120) — short-form 'how-to' creative video app
- **2020-2022** — Product Manager at Google Search
- **2022-08** — Left Google after 7 years; co-founded OpenArt AI with John Qiao
- **2022** — OpenArt launched; 'Pinterest for AI images' post became top story on Hacker News
- **2023** — Raised $5M seed round from Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures
- **2024** — Scaled from $1M to $10M ARR within 12 months; introduced character consistency feature (ranked #1 Product Hunt)
- **2025-07** — Launched One-Click Story feature — enter a sentence, get a 1-minute video with narrative arc
- **2025** — Revenue grew 7x from $10.5M to $70M+ ARR; reached 8M monthly active users
- **2025** — Hosted first AI Influencer Summit in San Francisco; produced 'Bot House,' first AI reality TV show
- **2026-01** — Raised $30M Series A led by Canaan Partners (total funding: $35M)

## Achievements

- Scaled OpenArt from $1M to $10M ARR in 12 months
- Grew revenue 7x in 2025, from $10.5M to $70M+ ARR with ~20-person team
- Reached 8 million monthly active users
- Raised $30M Series A from Canaan Partners (Jan 2026); total $35M raised
- Co-created Google Tangi, a short-form creative video app in Area 120 that grew to millions of MAU before being acquired by Google Search
- OpenArt's character consistency feature ranked #1 on Product Hunt
- Hosted first AI Influencer Summit in San Francisco (Q1 2026)
- Produced 'Bot House' — described as the first AI reality television show
- Grew OpenArt to one of the most capital-efficient AI companies globally

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Raised $30M Series A led by Canaan Partners; total funding reaches $35M
- **2026-01** — Launched major UI overhaul for OpenArt platform
- **2026-01** — Hosted first AI Influencer Summit in San Francisco
- **2026-01** — Produced 'Bot House' — billed as the first AI reality television show
- **2025-08** — One-Click Story feature received widespread press coverage including TechCrunch
- **2025-07** — Launched One-Click Story feature — convert a sentence into a 1-minute video

## Links

- Website: https://openart.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kechunmao
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/wedoflow

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/coco-mao
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27